Years:  1995, 1997, 1999, 2001
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kelsey Grammer, David Hyde Pierce, John Mahoney, Peri Gilpin, Jane Leeves
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Frasier was always a great show, and eight of the best episodes are now packaged together on the Frasier Fan Favorites DVD out March 6^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  I was kind of hoping for a bunch of episodes that reunited Frasier with his old friends from Cheers, like the one where Diane comes to Seattle wither her new play.

     But I guess that since the Cheers Fan Favorites is being released on the same day, there’s not really much point in bringing all those characters back.  Instead, we get what feels like eight randomly chosen episodes –

     Frasier gets sick and Niles fills in for him at the radio station, which makes Frasier paranoid that Niles could take his job.  Frasier gets caught in Daphne’s room a couple of times and they fight.  There’s a radio play, a bunch of episodes where Niles lusts after Daphne, and a huge amount of romantic misunderstandings. 

     Had I not been a Frasier fan for years, I would think that the show was nothing but romantic misunderstandings and people chasing other people.  Actually, I guess it kind of was.

     But it was a great show about chasing women and then misunderstanding them.  The only problem with a DVD featuring eight of the fan favorite episodes is that it leaves me wanting more.  In addition to wanting the Cheers related episodes, I wanted some with Lilith, which I always thought were funniest.  Then again, the Cheers Fan Favorites covers all the Lilith bases as well!

     There are five movies, comprising six discs, on the new Art of Filmmaking box set, out October 25th from First Run Features.  Think of a director, or a big-name actor, or a giant music producer, and chances are they appear in at least one, if not more of the five documentaries.  Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorcese, Steven Spielberg, Tom Cruise, Jerry Bruckhemier, Werner Herzog, Errol Morris, Susan Sarandon, the list goes on and on and then some.

     This is the ideal box set for the aspiring filmmaker – the best of the best talking about their craft in all sorts of different film genres.  Herzog, Morris, Kevin MacDonald, Scott Hicks and dozens of other documentary filmmakers talk about their craft in the 2008 movie Capturing Reality: The Art of Documentary.  To hear an interview I did with the director of this film, Pepita Ferrari, click here.  The one complaint I have here is that the initial DVD release of Capturing Reality came with an excellent second disc of bonus features, and that disc is not included in this set.

     Spielberg, Eastwood, Scorcese, Tim Burton, James Cameron, Robert Altman, Oliver Stone, Ron Howard, Terry Gilliam, Sydney Pollack, a ton of other directors and some huge-name actors (Cruise, Leonardo DiCaprio, Brad Pitt, Dustin Hoffman) appear in the movie Directors: Life Behind the Camera.  Both discs of this film are included in this box set, and they’re a bit of an effort to get through – you’ve got to click through on a ton of different menus – but with this incredible list of participants, it’s totally worth it.

     John Carpenter, who wrote Hallowe’en, Frank Darabont (Shawshank Redemption), and Paul Schrader (Taxi Driver, Raging Bull) are just three of the dozens of screenwriters who appear in Tales From The Script, a wonderful documentary about the art of screenwriting.  This is probably the most entertaining movie in the box set – the screenwriters are more engaging and funnier than many of the directors and actors in the other films.

     Light Keeps Me Company is more focused – a look at one man, Sven Nykvist.  Nykvist was the legendary cinematographer behind many of Ingmar Bergman’s most famous movies, and a two-time Oscar winner.  Woody Allen, Roman Polanski, Susan Sarandon and Bergman himself show up in the movie to talk about Nykvist, and the clips of Nykvist’s celebrated cinematography are still magnificent – especially when described by fellow movie legends.

     The fifth movie in the set is 1997′s Lavender Limelight, which takes a look at lesbian indie filmmakers like Cheryl Dunye, Heather MacDonald and Jennie Livingston.  This is a much different film than the others in the set, if only because nobody being interviewed is a really big name, and most of us have never seen their movies, like Watermelon Woman or Paris Is Burning. 

     That’s the best thing about this box set – every documentary is different, interviewing big-time filmmakers, little indie filmmakers, documentarians, cinematographers and writers, all in one box.  An amazing box, that you can get here, from First Run Features.

Year:  1997
Genre:  TV series, Miniseries, History, Drama
Country:  Canada
Language:  English
Starring:   Dan Aykroyd, Sara Botsford, Ron White, Nigel Bennett, Aidan Devine, Robert Haley, Michael Moriarty, Michael Ironside, Christopher Plummer, Colette Stevenson, Art Hindle
Director:  Don McBrearty
Run time:  180 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     I must admit, my review of The Arrow is likely coloured by a great deal of nostalgia.  I remember the miniseries very well, when it first aired on CBC in 1997.  For years afterward, I was obsessive about the Avro Arrow, the greatest fighter plane in history built by Canadian companies, designed by Canadian engineers, and destroyed by the Diefenbaker government.  I went to the Aviation museum to see the one nose cone that remained of the one Arrow that was not totally wrecked.

     Now, with 14 years of hindsight, I can appreciate the miniseries for a few other reasons.  The who’s-who of Canadian actors that populated the cast.  Sara Botsford (SO hot!) and Art Hindle of that old Canadian show E.N.G., Colette Stevenson of Mysterious Island, Mutant X and a whole bunch of other Canadian TV programs.  And then there are the guest appearances (Michael Moriarty of Law & Order as President Eisenhower, Michael Ironside of X-Men: First Class as the CIA director, Christopher Plummer as a deceitful, sinister Canadian politician).  And of course Dan Aykroyd, the biggest star in the show, as the president of Avro Canada Crawford Gordon.

     The Arrow is the best miniseries the CBC ever did (and I believe it still holds the record for most-viewed among all CBC miniseries).  The incredible history of the Arrow makes great fodder for the program – the incredible engineering feats that helped it come about, the politicking that went into its inception, the Canadian Iroquois engines designed specifically for the plane, and the political gamesmanship that went into the cancellation of the program, the destruction of all the progress made up to that point, and the attempt by the government to cover up the existence of the program entirely afterward.

     Not only is it a fascinating story, but it’s full of great actors and the three-hour run time passes by incredibly quickly.  When I sat down to watch this DVD, out June 14th from Alliance Films, the whole series flooded back to me, and I remembered everything about it.  But I still couldn’t stop watching, and I sat through the three hours nonstop.  A fascinating, amazing miniseries, a great slice of Canadian history, and your kids will love it too.

     Off the top, I want to state my one big complaint with The Michael Moore Collection, out November 2nd from Alliance Films.  And that is simply that it doesn’t include the one film that put Moore on the map, the one big success that generated the rest of his succes.  that of course is the magnificent documentary Roger And Me.  But then, you can go buy that one for like eight bucks on DVD these days, and place it next to this collection on your shelf.  So do that.

  The Big One (*******7/10)

Year:  1997
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Moore
Archival appearances and interview subjects:  Bill Clinton, Steve Forbes, Garrison Keillor, Phil Knight, Studs Terkel, Rick Nielsen, dozens of others
Director:  Michael Moore
Run time:  91 minutes

     The Big One is not really a follow-up to Roger & Me, nor is it a documentary like the others in Michael Moore’s canon.  It follows him on his book tour as he goes across the country talking to people who are recently out of work, people who are trying to unionize and people who are generally pissed off at the way they are being treated by huge corporations.  In a sense, it’s a movie about companies that lay off massive amounts of workers while recording record profits.

     But really, it’s just a series of vignettes from a series of towns.  Sometimes it’s Moore speaking, sometimes he’s trying to get in to confront a CEO at a big company, sometimes he’s just jamming with Rick Nielsen of Cheap Trick.  He plays pranks on his handlers.  He jokes with Phil Knight of Nike while trying to convince him to visit his sweat shops in Indonesia.  And he bites the Random House hand that feeds him.  All of it is entertaining, all of it is interesting, but there’s no gigantic statement like those in his other films.

  Bowling For Columbine (**********10/10)

Year:  2002
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Moore
Archival appearances and interview subjects:  George W. Bush, George H. W. Bush, Charlton Heston, Matt Stone, Trey Parker, Marilyn Manson, Dick Clark, Dick Cheney, Chris Rock, Bill Clinton, dozens of others
Director:  Michael Moore
Run time:  120 minutes

     I have a small personal connection to Bowling For Columbine.  There’s a scene where Michael Moore interviews the mayor of Sarnia, just down the road from Windsor and Detroit.  He’s trying to figure out how so many people are killed with guns every year in Detroit, but just across the river in Canada it almost never happens.  During that interview, you can see a little model replica of the Bluenose II, our famous Canadian sailing ship, in the mayor’s office.  I was one of the people who presented the mayor with that replica, while touring Canada with the Bluenose II.  So…that’s neat.  For me.  Probably not for you.

     Anyway, Bowling For Columbine was the movie that solidified Moore as a voice for a country, for a generation and for a cause.  It also was the movie that made him public enemy #1 for a certain right-wing faction of doubters, an animosity that was further fueled and amped-up by his follow-up, Fahrenheit 9/11. 

     This is a documentary that, every time I see it, makes me laugh.  The opening scene, where Moore goes into a bank and walks out with a gun is hilarious.  And scary.  Many other moments in the movie are very funny, and many are very sad.  The security camera footage of the Columbine school attacks never fails to make me cry.  Same goes for the scene of the airplanes flying into the World Trade Centre.  So I laugh, and I cry, and I watch this movie at least once a year.  And it remains as good as ever.

  Fahrenheit 9/11 (**********10/10)

Year:  2004
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Moore
Archival appearances:  George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Britney Spears, Ben Affleck, Stevie Wonder, Al Gore, Condoleeza Rice, Donald Rumsfeld, George H. W. Bush, Ricky Martin, Saddam Hussein, Osama Bin Laden, Dick Cheney, dozens of others
Director:  Michael Moore
Run time:  122 minutes

     The ultimate indictment of the Bush-Cheney administration, Fahrenheit 9/11 explores the relationship between the Bush family and the Bin Laden family, the relationship between the military and big business, and the relationship between the attacks of 9/11 and the invasion of Iraq.  And of course many other details that are shocking and terribly sad.  If Michael Moore wasn’t already a lightning rod before this movie came out, he became the ultimate polarizing celebrity figure in America once it was released.

     This is the one Moore movie you hear those who hate him reference the most.  This is the proof, they say, that he fudges facts and presents a biased view and that he just hates conservatives and that’s his entire raison d’etre.  Whenever you hear someone say that, ask them one question – have they actually seen the movie?  More often than not, they haven’t.  The logic is usually quite simple.  I refuse to watch anything by that left-wing nutjob!  He’s so awful, I wouldn’t stoop to it!  So…how do you know?

     The truth is, Moore deals in facts.  Yes, they are presented in a certain way, to create a certain opinion.  But they are, nonetheless, facts.  And the facts he presents in Fahrenheit 9/11 are, in no uncertain terms, earthshattering.  No matter how you want to spin them.

  Sicko (*********9/10)

Year:  2007
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Moore
Archival appearances:  George W. Bush, Bill Clinton, Richard Nixon, Hillary Clinton, Billy Crystal, dozens of others
Director:  Michael Moore
Run time:  123 minutes

     Sicko is Michael Moore’s take on the American health care system.  A system which, at the time the movie was made, was broken and disastrous.  Since the movie was released, the Americans have engaged in a massive, knock-down drag-out health care debate that resulted in some serious changes to their system.  Not the monumental, system-altering changes Moore advocates in Sicko, but there has been a start.

     I can’t say how much influence the film had on the debate, or on the health care reform itself.  I could suspect that in the end, it did more to polarize the debate than anything.  Republicans, after all, would be hung in effigy by their base if they were seen to be supporting anything that Michael Moore advocates.  But the film itself changed the minds of millions of people.  And it presented the problems, and the solutions, to the Americans’ health care crisis in a simple, easy to understand and entertaining way.  And what more do you want from a documentary?

  Capitalism: A Love Story (**********10/10)

Year:  2009
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Moore, Wallace Shawn, people of America
Archival appearances:  George W. Bush, Ronald Reagan, Franklin Delano Roosevelt, Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter, Barack Obama, Barney Frank, Henry Paulson, Timothy Geithner, dozens of others
Director:  Michael Moore
Run time:  120 minutes

     Capitalism: A Love Story is Michael Moore’s finest work.  This is the best film he has ever made.  It is as sad and contemplative as Bowling For Columbine, as angry as Fahrenheit 9/11, and as political as Sicko.  But more than anything, this film is his breakout hit, Roger and Me, writ large.  That movie was done on a small scale – one man trying to get some answers from the boss of GM as Moore’s hometown of Flint, Michigan sputtered and died.  Capitalism takes that same concept and applies it on a much, much larger scale that encompasses all of America, its financial system, and the philosphy of capitalism itself.

     In fact, Capitalism uses some footage from Roger And Me, and Moore returns to several themes from that classic film.  He goes to the GM headquarters again – of course he is turned away once more, 20 years later – but this time he is not going after the big guys.  This time he might actually have some advice for the auto maker, and he just wants to get his advice to the people who need it most.  And of course, at this time, GM is one of the companies which need it the most.

     I have seen a lot of people (Moore himself included) talking about this film before it opened.  And they have all said that it is an indictment of capitalism as a flawed and evil system.  Yes and no.  I didn’t get the sense that Moore wants the entire system of capitalism to be torn down.  I think it’s more of a lament for the old days, and a sad look at the way “capitalism” has become something entirely different than it was one hundred, or seventy, or even thirty years ago.  I certainly think Moore wants the current system to be torn down.  And I think he’s right.  But I don’t necessarily think that the point we’ve reached is the necessary and obvious end result of capitalism itself.

     Instead, Moore presents our current financial situation as the obvious end result of deregulation, of capitalism unrestrained, of a governmental system overrun and essentially taken over by capitalist financial entities who, in many cases, hold more power than the president.  As Moore (and most other people) sees it, this all began with Ronald Reagan in the 80s, as he tore down the regulations that kept banks and Wall Street and others under wraps. 

     Moore doesn’t attempt to explain the financial collapse of the past year.  Well, he does make an attempt, but it’s a pretty half assed one.  Instead, he makes it clear that we’re not supposed to understand.  We’re not supposed to understand credit default swaps and derivatives and all these other terms that have been thrown around all over the news.  It’s like the theory of relativity.  Everyone’s heard of it, 2% of the world has a basic knowledge of what it means and how it works, but there are only about six people alive who really, truly, understand what it’s all about.

     Capitalism features a few of the stunts that made Moore famous.  But it appears that his heart really isn’t into it.  Even that works for this movie though, as he pulls up an armoured car to a series of banks asking for the bailout money back on behalf of the taxpayers.  He wanders about, as though in a daze, making a half-hearted attempt to convince various security guards that he is there to make a citizens’ arrest of the bank CEOs.  More than anything else, in this movie Moore seems to feel as defeated as the rest of his country.  He hates the way things have turned out.  He hates the fact that there is a company that deals only in buying foreclosed homes dirt cheap and selling them at a massive profit.  He hates the fact that major corporations take out life insurance on their employees, without telling them, and then cash in when those employees die.

     Moore hates all of this.  But what is he to do?  The forces that created the climate that created the meltdown are still as strong as ever, living off all that bailout money and laughing all the way to the bank.  The policies which make the richest 1% of Americans worth more than the poorest 95% combined still exist, and the gap is widening every day.  In fact, the richest of the rich are making absolutely certain that this gap widens.  But not just by making more money.  It actually makes them richer when the poor get poorer.  So that’s in their best interests as well. 

     The movie turns around in tone when Moore makes an excellent point – the reason that this gap has been allowed to exist for so many years, and that people have still bought into the system that created that discrepancy, is that people have always thought “that could be me”.  You know, I live in the land of capitalism, the free market, and opportunity.  And that means that even I, a lowly working-class American, could someday be as rich as the guys who run Goldman Sachs.  However, with the recent meltdown of the financial sector, Americans are starting to realize that this carrot on the stick was never really there.  No, in fact.  They can’t ever become that rich.  They will never get there, and they aren’t meant to.

     So Moore talks to some people who have risen up to fight the system.  Workers who barricaded themselves in a window and door shop until the Bank of America paid them what they were owed.  Familes who forced their way back into their empty, abandoned, foreclosed homes and refused to leave.  This is all very good.  It’s hopeful and impassioned and ferocious.  Just like Moore’s movie.  At the end of the movie though, he suggests that all of the people in the theatre (and now, with the DVD release, in their living rooms) rise up as well.  He tells them not to take this any more.  And although Canada is nowhere near as bad as the U.S., this certainly applies to us as well.  I just have no idea how to do that.  What is it I can do to buy out of this system?  How do I fight the system until it comes to get me too?  I would like a few more ideas on that front.  Because after watching Capitalism, I am ready.  I’m totally ready to rise up, and be a part of the solution.  I just need someone to tell me how.

Year:  1997, 1998
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Action
Country:  Canada
Language:  English
Starring:  Cameron Daddo, Carrie Anne Moss, Christina Cox, Jacqueline Torres, Jason Blicker
Eye candy:  Moss, Cox, Torres
Producers:  Jay Firestone, Stephen Downing
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films   

     At the beginning of Season Two of FX, on DVD October 26th from Alliance Films, the cop who starred in the first season is killed.  This is done so they can replace him with a hot babe cop who will take his place.  And THAT is being done because this show needed more hot babes.  Anything to make it at least a little bit interesting.

     Here’s the thing though.  My DVD remote was screwing up, so I couldn’t move around in the menus, and therefore couldn’t access the play-all function on these DVDs, so I could only watch the first episode on each disc of Season Two.  Also, because of the way the DVDs slide around inside the package, two of them were damaged and the episodes wouldn’t play.  Alliance has this new way of packaging TV series, that they’ve been using for about six months, and every time I get a TV series from them, at least one of the discs is screwed up because they’re all over the place by the time the thing gets opened.

     So I managed to watch only three episodes of season two.  One was the first one which introduced the new hottie, and the other two were about stuff blowing up and people disguised as other people.  All three were boring.  At least this series stars Christina Cox, one of my all-time favourites.  There were no pictures of the DVD online anywhere, because I guess no one else cared about it.  So I included a picture of Christina Cox.  At least I like her, if not her series.

Year:  1996, 1997
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Action
Country:  Canada
Language:  English
Starring:  Cameron Daddo, Carrie Anne Moss, Christina Cox, Kevin Dobson, Jason Blicker, Chris P. Anson
Eye candy:  Moss, Cox
Producers:  Jay Firestone, Stephen Downing
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The DVD cover of F/X: The Series Season One displays Carrie Anne Moss prominently.  Like she’s the star of the series.  As you can see from the picture I managed to dig up for this review, that is not the cover of this DVD.  That image has yet to reach the web for some reason.  Anyway, Carrie Anne Moss is not, really, the star of this show.  She just happens to be the biggest name to come out of it, with her work in The Matrix and Memento and all that coming later on.

     The real star of this show is Cameron Daddo, who plays a long-haired MacGyver type.  He’s a Hollywood special effects master who saves women in distress and helps the cops solve crimes through the use of makeup and explosions and other action-movie silliness.  The first disc in the Season One DVD set is the two-hour pilot, which is better than the rest of the season.  But it’s still darn silly, with cartoonish bad guys and even sillier premises.

     But there is something to be said for F/X.  Cameron Daddo is generic and average at best as the lead, but the supporting cast is solid.  Moss is terrific as an aspiring actress who helps out, and I’m a huge fan of Christina Cox, who plays the tough-chick assistant.  I don’t know if that makes Season One, out September 28th from Alliance Films, worth buying.  I think it at least makes it worth watching once.

Year:  1997
Genre:  Action, Spy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  George Clooney, Nicole Kidman, Armin Mueller-Stahl, Marcel Iures, Alexander Baluev
Director:  Mimi Leder
Run time:  123 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The best thing I can say about The Peacemaker, which gets a Blu-Ray release on September 21st from Paramount Home Entertainment, is that it doesn’t feel at all like a two-hour movie.  It’s so fast-paced that the time really flies by.  But, like a marathon session at a Chinese buffet, the movie left me feeling decidedly empty when it was all over.  Moments after the final credits, I found it hard to remember details.  I suspect that within a few hours, I will have forgotten major plot points and much of the rest of the film.

     The Peacemaker is slick.  It’s fast-paced, it’s glossy and shiny, and it looks great on Blu-Ray.  With the exception of a few scenes (like an early one on a train and a few later ones) that don’t look great.  But it’s the kind of movie that has no soul.  The stars (George Clooney and Nicole Kidman) have no distinctive traits that mark them as human.  Every time they start to provide a window into their thoughts and feelings something blows up or a car chase erupts out of nowhere.

     At the beginning of the film, a very small effort is made to humanize both.  Kidman gets a bunch of flowers from (presumably) a lover who has wronged her in some way.  It never comes up again.  She shows a moment of indecision when she discovers she is in charge of the American operation dealing with the nuclear weapon that has just been set off.  She is overwhelmed and terrified, but it’s a fleeting moment and that emotion never returns.  Clooney is just presented as a charming, tough-guy plays-by-his-own-rules military commander.  That’s it as far as his depth goes.

     There are really two movies here – the nuclear detonation, the theft of nine nuclear weapons, and the mad scramble as the Americans attempt to hunt down the thieves.  Then there’s the one weapon that makes it out, gets into the U.S., and the mad scramble as the Americans attempt to hunt down the bomber before he blows up a piece of America.  The first part is more interesting – the second part is a little sad.  Like, of course an audience will care only if the bomb goes off in America, right?  Near some important landmarks, perhaps?

     The villain in the first part is a cartoon – a rogue Russian general (Alexander Baluev) who has stolen the nukes for profit and is presumably going to sell them to Iran.  He is bad.  You know he’s bad because he shoots his OWN men when they question him!  The villain in the second part (a terrific Marcel Iures) is a little more nuanced.  An attempt is made to humanize him – he’s a reasonable man driven to unreasonable measures after the murders of his wife and daughter…but really this is just a glossy half-assed attempt to make him identifiable and give him motivation.  But really – a reasonable guy who responds to the death of his family by murdering millions of others?

     The movie is as pretty, as charming and as soullessly dead-eyed as Nicole Kidman herself.  For the first time with this movie, I paid close attention to how Kidman looks in HD.  That flawless porcelain doll look she has couldn’t possibly be real, right?  There MUST be a few blemishes that show up in high definition!  Well…nope.  Kidman is as gorgeous, as perfect and as flawless as she looks the rest of the time.

     I realized that this is the problem I have with Nicole Kidman.  She is absolutely flawless.  She is perfectly symmetrical and beautiful in every way and maybe the prettiest woman alive.  I know what you’re saying – that’s a problem?  Well, yes.  Kidman looks more like a computer-generated image of “the perfect woman” than she does a real person.  She’s an artist’s rendering of a gorgeous movie star, a blemish-free goddess who has no need for airbrushing or touchups but has a desperate need for something that gives her character. 

     Kidman really is a terrific actress, but her appearance alone sucks some of the soul out of every role she plays.  I may be alone in thinking this.  I have a similar opinion of many things – I think Rush are an extremely talented band who play with remarkable technical precision.  But I can’t hear the soul in the music, and I lose interest fast.  Same goes for Glenn Gould, Yngwie Malmsteen and The Peacemaker.  Which gets one extra star for looking great on Blu-Ray (for the most part).

  Good Will Hunting (**********10/10)

Year:  1997
Genre:  Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Matt Damon, Ben Affleck, Casey Affleck, Robin Williams, Stellan Skarsgard, Minnie Driver, Cole Hauser, George Plimpton
Director:  Gus Van Sant
Run time:  127 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Good Will Hunting remains one of my favourite films of all time.  It achieves a stunning balance between drama, romance, comedy and genuine badass intellectualism.  Has there ever been a more badass intellectual scene than the one on the video included in this review?  The writing in this film is remarkable – maybe the best written scene in the whole movie is one between Robin Williams and Stellan Skarsgard at a pub, a scene all about Ted Kaczinski.

     It’s really two things that make this film great.  The writing and the acting.  Matt Damon and Ben Affleck won an Oscar for their screenplay, and there’s no question it was well deserved.  And Damon is flawless in the film as Will Hunting, a young man with incredible intellectual gifts who just doesn’t want to live the life of a professional Brain.  He hangs out with his friends, gets into fights, boozes it up and works menial jobs, partly because that’s all he has ever wanted to do, and also because he is scared to do realize his full potential.

     Soon, he is discovered by a math professor (Skarsgard), who sees in this boy an untapped genius who could change the world.  But he needs, somehow, to get through to the troubled Will.  Enter the other sensational actor in this film, Robin Williams.  He plays a psychiatrist who is entrusted with Hunting, and he’s expected to bring the full potential out of the rebellious kid.  It isn’t an easy task.  But it sure is a fun one to watch.

     Also terrific is Minnie Driver, as the Harvard student love interest who, in her own way, helps Will change his perspective on his gift and on the world.  Good Will Hunting is simply a fabulous movie, and a magnificent addition to any DVD collection.

  Rounders (*******7/10)

Year:  1998
Genre:  Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Matt Damon, Edward Norton, John Malkovich, Gretchen Mol, John Turturro, Famke Janssen, Lenny Clarke, Martin Landau
Director:  John Dahl
Run time:  125 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Coming right on the heels of Good Will Hunting was Rounders, which traded off Matt Damon’s sudden popularity and the fantastic teaming of two incredible young actors – Damon and Norton – to elevate what could have been a rather silly and cheesy B-movie to one that was more than worthwhile.  Yes, there are some silly scenes.  For example, the oreos – anyone think that wasn’t going to factor in the end somehow?

     But Norton and Damon are so good as the compulsive troubled gambler and his poker prodigy buddy that I forget the silliness.  And although John Malkovich, the Ultimate Bad Guy Poker Player, is a bit of a cartoon, he’s such a fun cartoon that it doesn’t matter.  I’ll still enjoy The Cincinnati Kid more as the ultimate poker movie, but I will always hold a soft spot in my heart for Rounders.  As the second-best movie in this double feature, out March 2nd from Alliance Films, Rounders makes this single-disc bargain purchase that much better.  It’s a must.

     With Inglourious Basterds coming out next week, Alliance Films is hoping that Quentin Tarantino will be top of mind with you, the folks who buy DVDs.  And so they have put Tarantino’s six big movies together in a package so you can re-familiarize yourself with the genius of this unique director before watching his latest masterpiece.  And that’s a good thing.  A brief recap, for those of you who have forgotten what Tarantino has done over the course of his remarkable career:

     Reservoir Dogs (**********10/10):

  “How many dicks is that?”
  “A lot.”

Year:  1992
Genre:  Crime, Gangster
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Harvey Keitel, Tim Roth, Quentin Tarantino, Chris Penn, Michael Madsen, Steve Buscemi, Lawrence Tierney, Randy Brooks, Kirk Baltz, Edward Bunker
Cameos:  Steven Wright, Linda Kaye
Director:  Quentin Tarantino
Run time:  100 minutes

     I don’t think I can say anything about Reservoir Dogs that hasn’t already been said.  It is a phenomenal movie, an all-time classic, that slow-motion shot of the guys coming out of the restaurant at the beginning is a high-water mark in cinema, the dialogue turned movies on their ear, and every single actor involved with the production was better than top-notch.  The violence (although not as graphic and shocking as we thought it was in 1992) was stylish and had a substantial impact without being too cartoonish, and the finale was incredible.  The narrative style (jumping around in time) was a revelation, and the pop culture references were amazing. 

     Reservoir Dogs borrowed heavily from City on Fire, a classic Chow Yun-Fat Hong Kong movie.  I think at this point Tarantino fanatics are well aware of this fact.  The reason to revisit the film, however, is the little things that (perhaps knowingly, or unknowingly) reference Tarantino’s later work.  The discussion Roth and Buscemi and Penn have in a car about Pam Grier and who starred in Get Christie Love! is neat when you realize Pam Grier later starred in Jackie Brown.  Tim Roth and Steve Buscemi later appeared in Pulp Fiction, Madsen later appeared in the Kill Bill movies, and Harvey Keitel has been all over Tarantino’s later work, if only in strange and unbilled cameos like the one in Basterds.

     The addition of Steven Wright as the radio DJ doing K-Billy’s Super Sounds of the Seventies is a magnificent touch – he is an integral part of that “Stuck In The Middle With You” scene that became the most famous in the film.  One other little thing of note (at least, I think it’s kinda cool) - Linda Kaye appears in Reservoir Dogs as “shocked woman”, and then in Pulp Fiction as “shot woman”.  Linda Kaye starred in the 1960s TV comedy series Petticoat Junction, but is probably best known today as the woman who gets shot in the hip by Ving Rhames as he aims at Bruce Willis thirty years later.  All of this is cool.  To me, at least.  But the real reason to watch Reservoir Dogs again is that it kicks ass and it’s amazing.

     Pulp Fiction (**********10/10):

  “Describe what Marcellus Wallace looks like!”

Year:  1994
Genre:  Crime, Gangster
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Samuel L. Jackson, John Travolta, Bruce Willis, Uma Thurman, Harvey Keitel, Christopher Walken, Ving Rhames, Phil LaMarr, Peter Green, Paul Calderon, Steve Buscemi, Linda Kaye, Maria de Medeiros, Kathy Griffin, Julia Sweeney, Amanda Plummer, Angela Jones, Tim Roth, Alexis Arquette, Rosanna Arquette, Frank Whaley, Eric Stoltz, Quentin Tarantino
Director:  Quentin Tarantino
Run time:  160 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     It took me a while to choose a quote from Pulp Fiction to kick off this review.  Because just about every single line in this movie is entirely quotable and entirely memorable.  It’s tough to think about that.  How good is the dialogue in the movie when every single line is that good?  That, more than anything else, is what makes this movie utterly brilliant.  What do you choose?  “I’m a get medieval on yo’ ass”, “Royale with cheese”, “maybe your method of massage differs from mine”, “pretty please.  With sugar on top.  Clean the f** car.”  Or how about “any of you f** pricks move, and I’ll execute every m**f** last one of ya!”  Frankly, most of the quotes from Pulp Fiction that have become part of our pop culture ever since 1994 have too much swearing in them to be mentioned here.

     But it’s not just the dialogue that makes Pulp Fiction great.  Look above this review, and check out the list of stars.  Pretty impressive list, right?  Some big names in there.  But it’s not impressive just because Quentin Tarantino was able to get that many amazing actors to appear in his film.  No, Pulp Fiction is amazing because it created, or in many cases resurrected the careers of so many of those actors.  Uma Thurman is famous because of Pulp Fiction.  Same with Samuel L. Jackson and Ving Rhames.  The movie brought John Travolta back from career death, and introduced Christopher Walken to a whole new audience. 

     Harvey Keitel was already established at the time – he had done Mean Streets, Bad Lieutenant, and other classics.  But I would wager that more people know him as “The Wolf” than anything else.  I would also wager that Phil LaMarr, despite a long career on MAD TV, gets called “Marvin” more than anything else, and that Frank Whaley is pretty sick of people approaching him to say “check out the big brain on Brett!”  These are just guesses, of course.  But when I need to describe an actor to someone – if I’m talking about the new movie where Tim Roth stops aging or something – I can’t just say “Tim Roth”.  Not everyone knows who he is.  But if I say “Pumpkin from Pulp Fiction“, they know right away.

     Then there’s Bruce Willis.  The year before he did Pulp Fiction, he did a movie called Striking Distance, where a cop is a serial killer, there are several boat chases, and the love interest chick is Sarah Jessica Parker.  He had just come off The Last Boyscout, Die Hard 2 and Hudson Hawk.  He was a bona-fide movie star, but he was spinning his wheels somewhat in terms of creativity.  Pulp Fiction helped to change his image somewhat, and launched a second phase of his career.  After playing Butch Coolidge in 1994, he went on to star in 12 Monkeys, The Fifth Element, The Sixth Sense, and one of the most entertaining movies of his action career, Die Hard With A Vengeance with…Samuel L. Jackson.

     Pulp Fiction, though, was more than just a quotable movie and a career-maker for so many actors.  It was also a marvel of structure, of filming, and of art-film-meets-action movie-meets-comedy.  It is genuinely hilarious, it crackles with suspense and action, there are some suddenly and remarkably brutal scenes, and yet it is artistically incredible as well.  What makes Pulp Fiction so terrific artistically is that it is open to interpretation in so many ways.  There is a remarkable theory out there that suggests that what is in the never-seen case is actually Marcellus Wallace’s soul, and that the bandaid on his head and Jules Winfield’s acknowledgement of having witnessed a miracle are all part and parcel of returning the soul to its owner.  It’s an amazing theory, and who knows if it’s true.  I won’t go into great detail here, but google it.  It’s fascinating.

     More than anything though, Pulp Fiction was, and remains, the coolest movie ever made.  It’s one of the few movies that bears up under several viewings (in my case, about two hundred viewings).  And it’s also perhaps the second-most influential movie of all time.  Not necessarily second-most influential in terms of movies that followed it, although that is certainly possible too.  But second-most influential in the wider culture outside movies.  Nowhere near as many people have seen Pulp Fiction as have seen Star Wars, and perhaps that’s why it’s only #2.  Hopefully, however, even more people will see this absolute classic as it gets released yet again.  Pulp Fiction.  A must-have.

     Jackie Brown (********8/10):

  “Is she dead, yes or no?”
  “Pretty much.”

Year:  1997
Genre:  Crime, Gangster
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Pam Grier, Robert DeNiro, Samuel L. Jackson, Robert Forster, Michael Keaton, Chris Tucker, Sid Haig
Eye candy:  Bridget Fonda
Director:  Quentin Tarantino
Run time:  155 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Jackie Brown was considered by many to be Tarantino’s worst movie when it came out.  And they were right.  Following on the heels of two of the greatest films of the 90s, it was a little disappointing.  And until Death Proof came out many years later, it was the low-water mark of Tarantino’s career.  But if a movie as good as Jackie Brown is your low-water mark, you have done something exceptional with your career, haven’t you?  Fewer memorable lines than Pulp Fiction, not as many cool action sequences as the Kill Bill movies that were to follow, and the characters were simply not as memorable.

     However, Jackie Brown was still as cool as movies got.  Pam Grier, brought back from career death.  Robert Forster, who had been long-forgotten thanks to movies like Maniac Cop 3, Robert DeNiro still at the peak of his career, Bridget Fonda, Michael Keaton and others made up an amazing cast, and is there a better scene in movies than the one where DeNiro shoots Bridget Fonda?  Maybe the one where DeNiro has sex with Bridget Fonda.  Jackie Brown isn’t Pulp Fiction or Reservoir Dogs or Kill Bill or Inglourious Basterds.  But it’s darn good anyway.

     Kill Bill Vol. 1 (*********9/10):

  “Leave your limbs behind.  They belong to me.”

Year:  2003
Genre:  Kung-Fu
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Japanese
Starring:  Uma Thurman, Sonny Chiba, Gordon Liu
Director:  Quentin Tarantino
Eye candy:  Vivica Fox, Lucy Liu, Daryl Hannah, Chiaki Kuriyama, Julie Dreyfus
Run time:  107 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     One of the great movies of the past ten years, Quentin Tarantino’s Kill Bill was a revelation when it hit the big screen.  A tribute to kung-fu movies, to old western movies, to Japanese samurai epics, and just about everything else you can imagine, Kill Bill feels terrifically familiar while still bringing something entirely new to the movie world.  Buckets of blood, filthy fun dialogue, and incredibly creepy scenes played for laughs, you can tell right away who made this film.  But never has Tarantino made such an adrenaline-fueled badass action movie. 

     “We’ll have us a knife fight.”

     Uma Thurman plays “The Bride”, who has been shot in the head and left for dead by an elite team of international assassins.  Thurman was once a member of that team, and when she finally emerges from her coma, she goes off to seek her revenge.  And…that’s about it, as far as plot goes.  Now, it’s knife fights and sword fights and all kinds of blood.  The first victim of The Bride’s wrath is Vernita Green (Vivica Fox), who is now a suburban homemaker with an adorable little daughter.  The scene where the two women put their knives away as the child gets off the school bus is priceless.

     Then the Bride needs a sword.  This sword must be made by Hattori Hanzo, the world’s greatest sword maker.  Hanzo is played by Sonny Chiba, a legend in Japanese martial arts cinema with his series of bloody, violent, morally questionable Street Fighter movies.  And in order to make Kill Bill even more bloody and violent and morally questionable, Uma Thurman needs a sword fashioned by Sonny Chiba.  It makes sense.  The addition of Chiba to the cast is a nice touch, but I would have liked to see him throw down at least a little.  Gordon Liu, another martial arts movie legend, was cast in the movie too, but he at least got to kick a little ass. 

     Then it’s Lucy Liu, whose creepy, bloody and brutal back story is told in Japanese animation.  I guess because it would have been too brutal and violent to show, and the movie wanted to maintain the “R” rating and not cross the line to NC-17.  I think there are a few other scenes that have been edited differently for the same reason (some black-and-white sword fights, for example.  I don’t get the reasoning there – if there is a ton of blood, does it really offend people less if it’s in black and white?)  Liu has an army of bodyguards called the “Crazy 88″, led by the aforementioned Gordon Liu.  And Uma Thurman must cut them all down to get to her target.

     Of course, there is a Kill Bill 2, so we know she will slice her way through the entire team of bodyguards, and we know that it will be badass, and we know that she will end up murdering Lucy Liu in the final act of revenge in Vol. 1.  But nothing can prepare for the carnage and the mayhem, and the leaving behind of limbs.  When this movie ends, even though it’s almost two hours long, I always need to watch the second movie, right away.  Which is why this single-disc edition of both movies works so well.

     “That woman deserves her revenge.  And we deserve to die.”

     Kill Bill Vol. 2 (**********10/10):

  “Gross.”

Year:  2004
Genre:  Kung-Fu
Country:  United States
Languages:  English, Japanese
Starring:  Uma Thurman, David Carradine, Samuel L. Jackson, Michael Madsen, Gordon Liu
Eye candy:  Daryl Hannah, Helen Kim
Director:  Quentin Tarantino
Run time:  137 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     It’s an amazing feat, but Kill Bill Vol. 2 actually manages to be better than Vol. 1.  The scenes with Gordon Liu playing the badass old warrior Pai Mei, as Uma Thurman undergoes his “cruel tutelage” would not be out of place in a classic kung-fu movie from the 70s, except that it’s more stylish and more badass.  The swordfight between Uma Thurman and Daryl Hannah in a tiny trailer is one of the best-choreographed fight scenes I have ever seen.  There are several moments, in the desert, that are either direct tributes to classic western movies or inspired scenes of western myth.  And the characters in Vol. 2 are a step up from those in Vol. 1, in a big way.

     First, there is Budd (Michael Madsen), Bill’s brother and a broken-down, regret filled strip club bouncer who has given up the professional killer lifestyle in favour of anonymity and a booze-soaked existence in the desert.  When he (of all people) manages to get the drop on the Bride (now named Beatrix Kiddo), and buries her alive, it’s one of the most frightening and claustrophobic scenes in all of Tarantino’s oeuvre.  Daryl Hannah, playing the evil (”evil” being a relative term in these movies, but she is the worst of the worst) bad girl, is both smoking hot and frighteningly creepy as she stalks the Bride.  The scene where she leaves Budd’s trailer and gets Thurman’s two feet in her chest is one of the few real “oh yeah!” moments in these films.

     It’s almost sad that Elle Driver (Hannah) kills Budd, leaving the Bride’s quest for revenge slightly less satisfying.  But the scene between the two women is so immensely satisfying that it eclipses any disappointment I felt at not seeing everyone brutally murdered by Uma Thurman.

     And then there’s Bill.  Given the recent and sad passing of David Carradine, this is the most recognizeable and important role he ever played in a movie.  And it’s the best acting performance of his life.  And he is one of the most badass characters in any Tarantino movie.  And he’s still rather cheesy.  In fact, Carradine’s Bill in Kill Bill Vol. 2 is almost a Steven Seagal character.  The silly philosophizing, the almost-phony mysticism, the soft-spoken yet badass sense of his own wisdom.  And of course the kung-fu.  He is what Seagal could be in the hands of Tarantino.  And here’s me hoping those two hook up for a movie some day.  A guy can dream.

     Of course, Tarantino made the two movies as one movie.  Kill Bill was supposed to be one, super-long, crazy badass movie.  But not a lot of people would have sat through four hours in a theatre, so it was split into two films that people might actually go to watch.  I, though, am one of those people who would have sat through four hours of this in the theatre.  And I have, often, sat through all four hours of this in my house.  And now, I can do so without getting up.  There are no special features.  But who needs them?  After two Kill Bill films, I am too exhausted and satisfied to care.

     Death Proof (*******7/10):

  “Ladies, we’re gonna have some fun.”

Year:  2007
Genre:  Horror
Country:  United States
Languages:  English
Starring:  Kurt Russell, Quentin Tarantino, Eli Roth, Michael Parks
Eye candy:  Rosario Dawson, Zoe Bell, Rose McGowan, Vanessa Ferlito, Jordan Ladd, Sydney Tamiia Poitier, Tracie Thomas, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Helen Kim
Director:  Quentin Tarantino
Run time:  114 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     True to Quentin Tarantino form, he packs Death Proof with as many references to other movies as possible. The whole film is a campy and terrific throwback to the days of drive-in cinema, and most of it is wonderful. Kurt Russell, perhaps banking on Tarantino to resurrect his career just as he did for John Travolta and David Carradine, plays a stunt driver who gets his kicks by murdering hot young women with his car. He also does a really great John Wayne impression.

     Throughout the movie, Tarantino makes reference to Zatoichi, the blind swordsman, The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, Convoy, Junior Bonner, and a few of his own films, as well as a ton of old car movies like Smokey and the Bandit, the original Gone in 60 Seconds, and in a big way, the 70s classic Vanishing Point. The dialogue is as great as you would expect in a Tarantino movie, and does a wonderful job conveying the spirit of 70s B-movies. The only problem I have with the film is the first hour seems pretty unnecessary once the second half begins. It’d be better if the film started almost an hour in.

     Death Proof is not Tarantino’s best work, but it is a fantastic movie for anyone who is interested in cars, cheesy 70s film, or B-movie classics.  And having it with the Collection is better than having it without.  Tarantino: The Ultimate Collection comes out December 8th from Alliance Films.

“It’s open season on all suckheads”

Blade (********8/10)

 Year:  1998
Genre:  Action, Comic book
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Wesley Snipes, Kris Kristofferson, Stephen Dorff, Udo Kier, Donal Logue
Eye candy:  N’Bushe Wright, Traci Lords, Sanaa Lathan
Director:  Steve Norrington
Run time:  121 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films
Related reviews:  Blade trilogy

     The original Blade movie was terrific, a real breath of fresh air in the world of comic book movies.  Wesley Snipes was big, muscular, bad-ass and mean.  Kris Kristofferson was amazing as Whistler, Blade’s mentor.  And Stephen Dorff was terrific as the bad guy, a vampire who wanted to trigger the Blood Tide – an event that would, I think, turn everyone in the world into a vampire.  Or something.  The point is, this movie was awesome.  Sword fighting, guns, vampires disintegrating and great special effects, and Snipes as the most ass-kicking, toughest, meanest comic book character of all time.  There was even some good comedy – mostly provided by Donal Logue, who kept getting his arm chopped off.  And for the really cult comic book fans – some appearances by Traci Lords and Udo Kier.  Terrific!  The second Blade is still better, but I love the original too.

“Every time someone farts, a demon gets his wings”

Spawn (***3/10)

Year:  1997
Genre:  Comic book, Action
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Jai White, John Leguizamo, Martin Sheen
Eye candy:  Theresa Randle, Melinda Clarke
Director:  Mark A.Z. Dippe
Run time:  97 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     If there is one thing that ruins Spawn (and make no mistake, this movie is RUINED), it’s John Leguizamo as the disgusting, irritating, obnoxious clown.  I THINK he’s supposed to be comic relief.  But there is nothing funny about him at any moment in this awful, awful movie.  If there are other factors ruining Spawn, there are a few to choose from.  A ludicrous plot, Martin Sheen’s illogical, nonsensical character, an unnecessary appearance by a cute young kid to add some heart to the film, and some silly special effects involving a cape that seems to billow and flap erratically for no good reason.  Other than that, Michael Jai White is pretty good, and most of the movie is visually impressive.  If only John Leguizamo and the kiddie stuff had been taken out.  This would be an AMAZING nine-minute movie.

“I trust only one person Jax, and you’re looking at her.”

Mortal Kombat (*****5/10)

Year:  1995
Genre:  Action, Video game
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Robin Shou, Linden Ashby, Christopher Lambert, Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa
Eye candy:  Talisa Soto, Bridgette Wilson
Director:  Paul W.S. Anderson
Run time:  101 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Mortal Kombat verges on being a movie that is so-bad-it’s good.  Nothing but fights, most of them poorly done and poorly choreographed, and a plot that is less than threadbare.  Of course, it’s a battle for the fate of the world.  And for some reason there is a hot chick there (Bridgette Wilson, who has no idea how to fight), and a self-centred movie star (Linden Ashby, who is also a rather unconvincing fighter).  The bad guy makes absolutely sure that the hot chick and the movie star go to his martial arts tournament.  We never know why.  The good guy learns his lessons from his creepy and useless master (Christopher Lambert) just in time to defeat the bad guy…somehow…thanks to the lessons.  I think.  There is a poorly animated monster who also fights. 

     This was one of the first movies based on video games.  And despite being truly dreadful, Hollywood kept making more video game movies, for some reason.  In fact, this movie was successful enough to spawn (no pun intended) a sequel where only Robin Shou returned.  And Talisa Soto, which was nice.  Sonya Blade was now played by Sandra Hess, who was maybe a little hotter but no more convincing than Wilson.  Mortal Kombat was, cinematically, an utter failure.  But it was a pretty entertaining one for those of us who love the awful.

     Why these three movies were packaged together, I don’t know.  Two are comic book movies – but one (Mortal Kombat) is not.  Two involve giant black guys flexing, but one (Mortal Kombat) does not.  Two involve martial arts moves and fight scenes, but one (Spawn) does not.  Two of them were absolutely dreadful, but one (Blade) was not.  I guess there was enough crossover to merit this set.  But I would still go with the Blade Trilogy, if I had my druthers.  And I DO have my druthers.

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     Lesbian Nation, a DVD out May 19th from First Run Features, is a collection of lesbian-themed short films, some better than others.  Also out today is the big highlight of the DVD, Lavender Limelight, a 57-minute behind the scenes look at lesbian film makers (and there are not a lot of them).  For a little more money, you can get all the other short films on this DVD set as well, and that’s probably worthwhile.  Both this set and Lavender Limelight can be ordered here.  Here is a look at each individual short film:

Carmelita Tropicana: Your Kunst Is Your Waffen (1994) (*******7/10): 

“Open your eyes, honey, ’cause Latinas come in all different colours!” 

     28 minutes long, this short film is about a Latina performance artist and protester who ends up in prison with a bunch of other protesting girls after a mini-riot in the East Village.  Most of the film takes place in the jail cell where four women are being held.  There are also some bizarre art sequences thrown in, which may or may not belong in the movie.  Frankly, they seem to be art-for-art’s sake.  There are also a few Spanish song-and-dance numbers, which are strangely compelling in a bonkers kind of way.  The fact that the women are lesbians seems to be incidental to the story, since they are fighting tooth and nail against racism, sexism, and all types of oppression in general.  The lesbian things just gives them another thing to be angry about.

     Even though a lot of the film appears to be contrived and silly, it still manages to be oddly inspiring and fun.  The over-acting stars are entertaining in their ham-fisted performances, and although almost all the dialogue is either angry shouting or Empoerment Shourting, it all works well enough to keep the movie fun for 28 minutes.  Any more and it would have been too much.  But 28 minutes is just right.

Jumping The Gun (1996) (******6/10):

“Your place or mine?”

     Just a few minutes long, Jumping The Gun is a welcome little addition to this DVD set.  After a one-night stand with a badass biker chick, a young woman wakes up early and while her companion sleeps, she imagines their entire relationship together by means of a typewriter, like she’s writing a short story.  It’s all over very quickly, but packs a full, lyrical story into the few minutes of screen time it has.  It’s a neat little fantasy sequence that works.

Little Women in Transit (1996) (*****5/10):

“Dad, are you ever disappointed that you never had any boys.”
“Sometimes.”

     A twelve-year-old girl sits in the middle of the back seat of a car between her two older sisters during a car trip.  She is writing in her notebook, and soon gets into a fight with her older sister about Louisa May Alcott and bras and other things.  Jennie’s sister torments her with lesbian taunts – Louisa May Alcott was a lesbian.  Jennie has three nipples, and all lesbians have three nipples.  It’s brief, about six minutes, but neat.  The father is basically one of those Peanuts adults, in the drivers seat, and the end is a bit of a shock.  But there’s nothing really compelling about the short.

Playing The Part (1995) (********8/10):

“This young man is going places.  I think I want him for my daughter.”

     Playing The Part is a 38-minute short film about a young lesbian trying to come out to her parents.  She is so conflicted about the prospect of doing so, and so frightened, that she does just about anything she can to avoid the confrontation that is sure to ensue.  She does some strange things, like trying to provoke her mother by turning her room into a pigsty.  She interviews her grandmother and father, and hides her lover from her family for quite a while.  It goes on a bit too long – by the time the actual Coming Out happens, I was pretty impatient.  I think that’s the idea here, that I feel as uncomfortable and impatient as she does, but I really did want to just fast-forward to the part where the whole thing gets resolved.

     High-society balls and a rich-girl lifestyle form the backdrop to the woman’s inner conflict – what should be a wonderful life for just about anyone else is actually oppressive for her, as the expectations of that society are keenly felt at every turn.  And, at every turn, she can’t tell her family and she runs away from the inevitable talk.  And, in the end, she doesn’t tell them at all.  I thought I would be annoyed, even angry, over such a non-ending after such a long (short) film that made me so impatient to begin with.  But I wasn’t.  As it turns out, I loved the ending.  I was happy I had been able to watch the reflective journey, and the actual confrontation itself may well have been anti-climactic.  Playing The Part really works, and shows that the journey is always more interesting than the destination.

Lavender Limelight (*********9/10):

     The full review of this terrific documentary I have done seperately, because it is being released on its own by First Run Features the same day as Lesbian Nation.  A great movie.

“I make films.”
“Why don’t you just find yourself a nice man?”

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      Lesbian Nation comes out on DVD May 19th from First Run Features.  It features five short films with a lesbian theme, and one of them is Lavender Limelight.  Clearly, Limelight is the highlight of the other DVD, but Lesbian Nation is a better pickup, just because of the extra material.  Both DVDs are available from First Run Features today, and both are fascinating.  The biggest problem I had with Lavender Limelight was that I hadn’t seen most of the movies that are talked about in the film.  Now I have to go find Go Fish, and Watermelon Woman, and a bunch of others.  Basically, I am annoyed by this movie because it cost me a lot of money.

     Another thing I found annoying is the fact that this documentary came out in 1997.  I would really like to know a little more about the progression of lesbian films and film makers since that time, in the intervening 12 years.  Maybe a little special feature or something?  Because the documentary is so compelling, and interesting, and inspirational, I wanted to know more than just what happened before 1997.  Anyway.  It doesn’t matter because what DID happen before 1997 is fascinating.

     The film interviews several lesbian film makers – Heather MacDonald (Ballot Measure 9), Rose Troche (Go Fish, The L Word), Jennie Livingston (Paris Is Burning), Monika Treut (Seduction: The Cruel Woman), Maria Maggenti (The Incredibly True Adventure of Two Girls In Love), Su Friedrich (Sink Or Swim), and Cheryl Dunye (Watermelon Woman, The Early Works of Cheryl Dunye).  Each woman offers a unique and insightful perspective on being a woman, being gay, and being a filmmaker.  For me, the most interesting thing was the film talk. 

     So many of these women are on the outside of the film world looking in, or at least existing on the fringe.  Sometimes it’s by choice, sometimes it’s simply because of the nature of their films – lesbian films are by definition going to be indie efforts, and they are the type of movie that a viewer doesn;t normally come across at the local video store.  You would need to seek them out, and this is a great place to start.  Seek it out here.  But you’re still better off with Lesbian Nation, which contains more good stuff.

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To hear the review   When watching the final (eighth) season of Wings, I was struck by something remarkable, but infuriating.  Why is Tony Shaloub the only actor from this show who went on to do something else?  He starred in Monk, while the other actors faded into oblivion.  (Tim Daly’s brief role on The Sopranos notwithstanding.)  Tony Shaloub plays the worst character on Wings, the terminally depressed cab driver Antonio.  His character is annoying, he’s a one-note joke who lasted for five seasons, he’s useless.

   Then again, there weren’t a lot of terrific characters on Wings.  Every time they had a hot chick, they let her go or used her poorly and made her into a cartoon (yes, Amy Yasbeck is a cartoon.  She is actually Jessica Rabbit.)  Only Crystal Bernard was attractive and good, but I think once she played the big-haired Helen for eight years, she could no longer get roles as an attractive woman who was not from the eighties.  That big hair has ruined many a promising career.

   The final season of this seemingly interminable show was the eighth season, and it’s out on DVD April 14th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Every episode was as irritating as the one before, until the final one.  So that’s the one I’ll talk about.  Wings was always more annoying than it was funny, and that formula held true through the final one-hour episode.  Joe and Brian get sent on a particularly obnoxious scavenger hunt by their dead father, and they are joined by just about everyone from the airport even though they are trying to keep it a secret.  Hahaha…Fay’s coming along!

   Anyway, eventually they find a ton of money, and they can finally do whatever they want.  (The amount of money, however, seems to me not to be enough to do whatever they want.  Maybe for a few months.)  And that takes up the first forty minutes.  In the last twenty minutes, some weird moment with Helen and a cello gets shoehorned into the plot in order to create some drama.    I’ve watched the last few seasons of Wings, since it came out on DVD.  And I don’t remember a single reference to Helen playing the cello.  Maybe the show was canceled too quickly for the writers to think it through.

   The whole series boiled down to this final moment, and it was forced and rushed.  But somehow, Wings managed to find a certain amount of heart and the finale was surprisingly tender and sweet and heartfelt.  The final episode sucked, in many cases worse than the rest of the show, but the actual ending was enough to make up for the sucking.  But it wasn’t enough to make up for Wings.

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   The first episode of the seventh season of Beverly Hills 90210, out April 7th from Paramount Home Entertainment, sees Brandon (Jason Priestly) stranded in this little racist hick town when his car breaks down. It’s one of those cheesy television cartoonish racist hick towns, where the white people are boorish and drunk and say things like “jungle fever”, and the black people all play the blues, eat cornbread and fried chicken, and look down on the white people.

   If this town was in a show other than 90210, it would be decidedly offensive. However, because it exists on this particular prime-time soap, it makes sense. This is a show which, outside it’s central premise and stars, is pretty inept. Every place the gang goes, other than L.A., could come straight out of a Bugs Bunny cartoon from the forties. Every character outside the seven main ones might as well be digitally recreated from stock footage of extras from Hawaii Five-O.

   90210 is delightfully cheesy, and you can’t take it seriously at all. Because if you do take it seriously, it will make you very angry.

“I’m going to sell one of my paintings!”

Of course, we all know that there is no way Richard (Malcolm Gets) is actually going to sell his paintings, get rich, and live in France for the rest of his life.  This would mean that the whole cast of Caroline In The City would have to change in the second season, and he was the best part of the first season.  So something has to happen in order to get Richard not to sell his paintings and force him to return to New York and resume his old job as Caroline’s (Lea Thompson) sharp-tongued, dark, and sarcastic comic strip editor.  So the guy who is about to buy his paintings and make his life great gets knocked over the edge of the pier into the water by a passing bicycle.  And the world (and this series) goes on as we would all expect it to go on.

The series also needs to resolve the end of last season, when Richard wrote Caroline a letter confessing his love, and then skipped town before she married Del, but then she decided not to marry Del, because she was secretly in love with Richard, but they would never tell each other…but how can the series possibly resolve this garbage without changing the way the series works?  HOW?  Well, it turns out to be pretty darn easy.

And so the first two episodes of the season resolve everything, as Annie (Amy Pietz) finds Richard’s letter, but gives it back to him so he can destroy it, and Richard starts working at an ice cream shop which forces him to swallow his pride and go back to work for Caroline, and now that he has been crushed by the world again he is back to being bitter and sardonic.  Del sticks around, despite being left at the altar, and Charlie still has roller skates, and Caroline and Richard are still in love with each other but won’t tell each other…I sure hope this goes on for several more seasons…it is a sit-com after all…although why these two are in love remains a mystery to me.  I guess it just fits well with the sit-com ethos of this sit-com.

Also in the first two episodes of the season, you get everything you will ever need to see in a sit-com.  Two people secretly in love with each other who won’t tell each other.  You know, like The Nanny, and Friends, and Frasier, and…everything else ever.  There are two seperate scenes where people who ought to notice each other don’t see each other, because they are moving around in the scene in convenient ways that allow them to miss each other.  Like, Richard bends down to pick up a penny, just as Caroline raises her head over the taxi roof…that kind of stuff.  There is a drunken phone call, an emergency delivery of a pregnant woman’s baby played for hilarity, and so on and so forth.

And of course, Richard comes back and picks up right where he left off, and there is the quirky slutty neighbour and the self-obsessed pretty boy, and the idiot on roller skates, and every other standard sit-com character.  Caroline In The City is a better sit-com than most of the others, because the cast is good, but it is certainly no classic.  It’s just a really good example of a really usual comedy television show.  And that doesn’t make it worth watching for me.  Oh right – the second season ends with one of those “pretend to be my wife to make my ex jealous” episodes.  Come on.  The Second Season of Caroline In The City comes out on DVD March 10th from Paramount Home Entertainment.