Year:  2000
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Directors:  Judith Ehrlich, Rick Tejada-Flores
Narrator:  Ed Asner
Run time:  57 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     The DVD for The Good War And Those Who Refused To Fight It is more comprehensive than just that documentary.  It has extensive special features, including a guide to draft-dodging – you know, in case the “draft” is ever instituted again…when we desperately need several hundred thousand more soldiers in…Libya?  Actually, with all the special features, I find the DVD a little much – maybe as cumbersome as its very long title.

     That being said, the documentary itself is really interesting, if short.  Less than an hour long, on a DVD that contains more than three hours worth of material, The Good War is the story of conscientious objectors (COs) in World War II.  That is a fascinating subject, mostly because it’s World War II.  COs could object to Vietnam on moral grounds.  They could object to Iraq and Afghanistan on the grounds that the United States should NOT be in those wars.  But World War II?  This is Hitler we’re talking about.  It really was the “Good War”.

     That’s the premise that makes the documentary interesting – when a cause is so obviously justified, how can some people object?  How can some people refuse to fight?  Well the answer really is obvious, stemming from the philosophy of Gandhi and other pacifists.  The idea that while I may be willing to die for a cause, I am not willing to kill for one.  The interviews with the surviving World War II COs are eye-opening, and the treatment they received in prison during the war brutal. 

     There are some terrifically interesting tidbits in the film – how the COs managed to help integrate the US prison system while incarcerated.  How they volunteered for dreadful, inhumane medical experiments from jail (partly to prove that they were as tough as any soldier, having been called sissies in the press over their decision not to participate in the war).  And there is a story about film star Lew Ayres (All Quiet On The Western Front), a pacifist who refused to fight and reported to a CPS camp when he couldn’t be guaranteed a non-combatant role in the army.

     All of these stories interested me, but none was dealt with in depth.  I would really have liked to learn more about each of the men interviewed for the documentary.  Or their later lives – one of them (David Dellinger) was part of the Chicago Seven, arrested for their anti-war protests during the Vietnam era at the Democratic national convention in 1968.  But their activities after World War II are rattled off as a postscript to the film, and little depth is achieved there either.

     A fascinating subject, to be sure, but pretty scant for such an extensive DVD release.  The Good War And Those Who Refused To Fight It comes to DVD March 29th from First Run Features.

     Claude Chabrol, the legendary French New Wave director whose oeuvre spanned more than 60 movies, all infused with suspense and creepy tension, died earlier in 2010.  First Run Features is now releasing a two-DVD set of Chabrol films, featuring two of his lesser-known late-career thrillers.  Both are very good, both are worth seeing.  It’s also a decent introduction to Chabrol for those who are not familiar with his work, as these are two fairly accessible movies compared to the rest of his output.

  Merci Pour Le Chocolat (********8/10)

Year:  2000
Genre:  Drama, Thriller
Countries:  France, Switzerland
Language:  French w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Isabelle Huppert, Jacques Dutronc, Rodolphe Pauly, Anna Mougalis
Director:  Claude Chabrol
Run time:  99 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Merci Pour Le Chocolat translates literally as “Thanks For The Chocolate”, but the screen shot that opens the film calls the movie Nightcap for English audiences.  I like that title.  Somehow, having seen the movie, the word “nightcap” holds more subtle menace than does “chocolate”. 

     There are a few story lines that make up Nightcap.  One is about Jeanne (Anna Mougalis), an aspiring pianist, who discovers an old family secret.  Although it is unlikely to be true, there is a slim chance that she was switched at birth with another baby.  The other child was the son, Guillaume (Rodolphe Pauly) of world-famous concert pianist Andre Polonski (Jacques Dutronc).  Jeanne plays piano, could her father be this incredible pianist?

     Another story line involves the pianist himself and his new wife Mika (the wonderful Isabelle Huppert).  They have a strange relationship, almost disinterested and passive-aggressive most of the time.  Their seemingly happy family has a cloud hanging over it, stemming from the mysterious death several years earlier of Andre’s first wife (and Guillaume’s mother) Lisbeth.

     Jeanne goes to visit Andre out of morbid curiosity, more than anything else.  She doesn’t really believe he is her real father, but the coincidence is intriguing.  On her first visit there, she catches Mika intentionally dropping a thermos full of chocolate.  Jeanne later finds out that the chocolate in that thermos was spiked with Rohypnol, the date rape drug.  And so begins the intrigue.

     The whole film is tense in the way Hitchcock made his movies tense.  We, the audience, know a little bit more than do most of the characters in the film.  We suspect that Mika is a nefarious character, but we don’t really know how or why.  We suspect that she is drugging people, but if she is, her motive for doing so is elusive and shrouded in mystery.  It’s a terrific work.  Not Chabrol’s best, but well worth revisiting.  Here’s your chance to do so.

  La Demoiselle d’Honneur (*******7/10)

Year:  2004
Genre:  Drama, Thriller
Countries:  France, Germany
Language:  French w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Benoit Magimel, Laura Smet, Aurore Clement
Director:  Claude Chabrol
Run time:  110 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     The Bridesmaid relies heavily on the performance of Laura Smet, who has to do two things.  As Senta, the femme fatale title character, she must be so convincingly sexy that I believe her “victim”, Phillippe (Benoit Magimel), would fall head over heels for her, losing all perspective on what a relationship should be.  At the same time, she has to be utterly crazy, and totally loony when it comes to what she believes a relationship is.  It’s the only way the movie would work.

     Basically, Chabrol asks us to buy into a relationship that makes little sense.  A button down, hard working real estate man loses himself entirely when a strange beautiful woman throws herself at him.  He loses himself so much, in fact, that if he were to discover that she was some kind of serial killer he would still be madly in love with her.  That stretches credibility, on its surface.

     But Laura Smet is so good, and so convincing, that I could actually see it.  I know what a brand new relationship is like, the rush of new love and so forth.  And I can see it being that much more intense with a woman who is, to borrow a phrase from John Mayer, sexual napalm.  And I can see such intensity in Smet that she can’t help but transfer it to her unfortunate partner Phillippe.

     As with most Chabrol works, there is more going on in this movie than a young man’s insane relationship with a deranged woman who may or may not be a killer.  There is also the wedding of Phillippe’s younger sister.  There is a lot made of the relationship his mother (the terrific Aurore Clement) has with a mysterious man named Gerard.  And there is a creepy stone bust that comes into the movie at strange times, so Phillippe can sleep with it.  Or kiss it.

     But in the end, what stayed with me was Laura Smet.  Her maniac obsession, her violent mood swings, her childlike vulnerability, and her magnetic sexuality.  She is The Bridesmaid.  Not just the character, but the whole movie.

Years:  2000, 2002
Genre:  TV movie, Biopic
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Meredith Monroe, Tess Harper, Walton Goggins, Lindsay Crouse, Haley McCormick, Courtnie Bull, Barbara Jane Reams, Richard Thomas, Skye McCole Bartusiak
Directors:  Marcus Cole
Run time:  181 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     At the beginning of Beyond The Prairie, there’s a weird blue spherical shining luminescent object that flies out of the sky and smashes into the ground in a field near the home of a young Laura Ingalls.  I was immediately intrigued – an unidentified falling flaming object?  The true story of Laura Ingalls Wilder was going to involve alien encounters, and science fiction anomalies, and maybe a totally crazy woman?  That was a lot better than I had imagined this story to be!

     But alas, it was no UFO.  In fact, the bad-CGI object was never explained at all.  It was merely a device to start a fire, which would lead to Laura’s father being heroic and stalwart, and show us that he had a great and loving relationship with his daughter.  That’s it.  From there, we get to meet her equally wise and wonderful mother and her warm and caring blind sister.  Everyone is fantastic!

     We’re treated to some seriously silly dialogue – Laura writes a mean-spirited poem about her spiteful and vindictive teacher, and her father has to have a heart-to-heart talk with her.  That talk goes someone like this…

  “Laura, you bin given a gift!  You kin take the things ya see, and feel, and turn ‘em into words.  And you used that gift to hurt this woman.  Spiteful and vindictive or not, she din’t deserve that.”

     These words are of course delivered with an impressive gravitas, as good ol’ Dad proves to be both kind-hearted and wise, and a constant source of life lessons to young Laura.  But this particular exchange, along with many others in the movie, made me laugh until my sides ached.  In fact, I rewound this scene, and a few others, and they made me laugh just as much the second time around.

     The rest of the time, the movie just moves from one plot point to the next, one incident to the next, one scenario at a time.  It never shows us any actual action, just the aftermath of that action.  We see Laura about to have sex with her new husband, then the scene cuts away and a baby is there.  We see Laura about to give birth, and the scene cuts away to the family grieving over (presumably) a stillbirth.  Laura’s husband Almonzo heads into town, next thing you know he’s back at the house with Laura fighting a blaze at the ol’ homestead.

     There are two parts to the story, both of which are contained on this DVD.  Which means there are three hours of the Laura Ingalls Wilder story here.  Three long, by-the-numbers hours of storytelling that, I hope, would make Ms. Wilder herself very upset.  There is almost no effort put in to character development.  Instead, it’s a chronological recounting of what we think must have been Laura’s life.  How little effort was put into the movie?  Laura’s daughter’s dog’s name is Fido.  Fido.  Need I say more?

Year:  1999, 2000
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jennie Garth, Tori Spelling, Tiffani Thiessen (barely), Jason Priestley (barely), Ian Ziering, Luke Perry, Brian Austin Green, Lindsay Price, Vanessa Marcil
Eye candy:  Garth, Thiessen, Price, Marcil
Creator:  Darren Star
Producer:  Paul Robinson
Run time:  19 hours 6 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Oh, the pain.  What could be more painful than watching the final episode of the long-running Beverly Hills 90210?  I can think of only one thing.  A wedding video.  I mean, an actual wedding video.  Like, two of your irritating, schmaltzy crappy friends sit you down in their living room to make you watch the video of their wedding.  Here we are setting up the candles…here we are waiting for the official…now we’re walking up the aisle…oh, you have to hear this – Ted wrote his own vows, it was so CUTE!

     That would be awful, wouldn’t it?  Almost as awful as actually attending a wedding, I would say.  And that’s what you get with the very last episode of Beverly Hills 90210.  One big, long, painful wedding.  And it SUCKS.  I’m sure fans of the show were waiting, in great anticipation, to see how the series would end its run.  And maybe they even identified with the characters enough to care about their big, long, painful wedding.  Maybe.  But it’s still a wedding episode.  And nothing more.

     MY biggest problem with it had to do with WHO was getting married.  David and Donna?  The two lamest characters in the entire run of the show?  How…lame.  Imagine if they had ended Seinfeld by marrying off Newman and Teri Hatcher.  Or Friends by marrying off Phoebe and Joey.  Or The A-Team by marrying off Face and B.A. Baracus.  Wouldn’t that be kinda…anti-climactic?

     And so it is with 90210, as the two worst characters get hitched in an interminable, cheesy and painful ceremony for the entire final episode.  You know how sometimes you have friends who get married, and you just know it isn’t going to work and they’re not going to last?  This is kinda like that.  You just know Donna’s gonna end up, later in life, with some tool like Dean McDermott.

     And you just know, later in life, David’s gonna dump Donna for some tool like Megan Fox.

Year:  2000
Genre:  Sci-Fi, TV series
Country:  Canada, United States
Language:  English
Guest stars:  Chris Elliott, Molly Ringwald, Stacy Keach, Antonio Sabato Jr, Adam Goldberg, Christina Cox, Laurie Holden, Bruce Boxleitner, Keith David, Corbin Bernsen, DB Sweeney, Meat Loaf
Eye candy:  Cox, Tanya Reid, Deanna Milligan, Holden, Jill Teed, Jessica Steen
Run time:  16 hours, 45 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Alliance Films releases the sixth season of The Outer Limits on September 7^th.  It’s just like the first five seasons, in that there’s a whole bunch of guest stars and a whole bunch of sci-fi episodes, and just like the last few seasons in that there’s no longer much nudity or freaky stuff.

     That’s OK, because the show is still good, and I can always throw on a few episodes of The Outer Limits and enjoy myself.  It doesn’t much matter that the first episode of the season is basically a cheesy one-hour episode of The Running Man starring Molly Ringwald.  Or that the biggest star in all of Season Six is Meat Loaf.  The show’s still good.  And it’s on DVD now.

   Memento (**********10/10)

Year:  2000
Genre:  Drama, Thriller, Mystery
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Guy Pearce, Joe Pantoliano, Carrie-Anne Moss, Stephen Tobolowsky, Jorja Fox, Callum Keith Rennie, Thomas Lennon
Director:  Christopher Nolan
Run time:  115 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The gem in this box set is Memento, a 2000 film that we’re getting a chance to revisit.  Pan’s Labyrinth was a big hit, and while Blindness didn’t sell millions of copies it was likely watched by more people than Memento, which existed only as one of those movies included on the “best movies of the decade” lists made by nerds and movie geeks, and read only by other nerds and movie geeks.  Perhaps now people will take a shot at watching the film, now that director Christopher Nolan has gone on to bigger and more successful things like The Dark Knight and Inception.  That being said, Memento might still be his best film.

     The way the story in Memento plays out backwards is not just a stylistic quirk or a contrived device.  It’s absolutely essential to the story and builds to a shattering conclusion.  When I saw this film in 2000, I thought Guy Pearce was going to be the DeNiro of the 90s – clearly the best actor of the decade.  He has been very good, but he’s never quite recaptured the jaw-dropping performance he had in this movie.  I didn’t expect Joe Pantoliano to become a great character actor, but I did expect more from him following this film.  Same goes for Carrie-Anne Moss.  But it appears they managed to catch lightning in a bottle with Memento, likely thanks to Christopher Nolan.

   Blindness (******6/10)

Year:  2008
Genre:  Drama
Countries:  Japan, Brazil, Canada
Language:  English
Starring:   Julianne Moore, Mark Ruffalo, Danny Glover, Alice Braga, Don McKellar, Maury Chaykin, Gael Garcia Bernal, Sandra Oh, Yusuke Iseya, Yoshino Kimura
Director:  Fernando Meirelles
Run time:  120 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Blindness was not the magnificent movie I had expected.  The director, Fernando Meirelles, had made two sensational films before this – the classic City of God and the terrific The Constant Gardener.  On that level, Blindness was a disappointment.  Julianne Moore and Mark Ruffalo were adequate at best as the couple at the centre of the film.  Moore plays the only person who can still see in a world that has gone blind.  You’d think she could do whatever she wanted – but in THIS land of the blind, it’s the guy with the gun in the hospital ward who is king.  Blindness is still interesting and visually intriguing.  But it’s stale and slow more often than not.

   Pan’s Labyrinth (*********9/10)

Year:  2006
Genre:  Drama, Fantasy
Countries:  Mexico, Spain
Language:  English
Starring:  Ariadna Gil, Ivana Baquero, Sergi Lopez, Maribel Verdu, Doug Jones, Alex Angulo, Manolo Solo
Director:  Guillermo Del Toro
Run time:  120 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Pan’s Labyrinth remains the only Guillermo Del Toro movie to really be taken seriously by the cinema snob-world at large.  That’s fine, because it’s his best movie.  But the rest of his films deserve a look as well – the two Hellboy movies, Blade II, The Orphanage.  Especially Blade II, I have a real soft spot for that movie.  At any rate, it’s Pan’s Labyrinth that gets included in this box set from Alliance Films, because it was a film-festival success, as were the others.  As are all the movies coming out in “Festival Collection” box sets August 17th. 

     I think more people will be familiar with this film than they will with Blindness and Memento.  It’s more recent and was a bigger success than either of those two movies.  And it really was fantastic.  A fantasy where a young girl escapes into a dream world and also a brutal, harsh story of human survival in wartime and the escape from sadistic violence.  It stars a kid, and it involves a dream world of fantasy, but rest assured – this movie is not for young children.  It’s for adults.  And if you have already seen it, this is as good a time as any to own it – this box set includes the interesting Blindness and the brilliant Memento.

Year:  2000
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  Canada
Language:  English
Starring:  Martha MacIsaac, Stephen McHattie, Sheila McCarthy, Jessica Pellerin
Creator:  Lucy Maud Montgomery (book author)
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     It’s over.  The run of Emily of New Moon has come to an end on DVD, just as it did on actual television.    A merciful end, at that.  This was one of the most sickly sweet, schmaltzy piles of claptrap ever conceived on Canadian television.  Let me sum up the entire series here, real quick.  Emily Starr is a poor sad friendless little orphan girl.  For all intents and purposes, she is the Little Match Girl.  But she has Big Plans and Big Dreams and she’s an oh-so-charming dreamer with a wonderful, everyone-loves-me imagination.  She’s going to be a Big Time Famous Writer like her creator Lucy Maud Montgomery.  (No one ever makes reference to Montgomery, but they often say words like “Dickens” and such.)

     Emily has a mentally handicapped cousin.  He exists so Emily can be nice to him.  Being nice to a mentally handicapped man indicates a level of intelligence and depth and kindness of character.  Because she is nice to Jimmy, cousin Laura must therefore be a wonderful person too.  There are a few more nice people – Emily’s best friend, and some boys she fantasizes about on occasion.  They are also nice to Jimmy and are therefore very nice as well.

     Everyone else in the series is not nice.  There are cartoonishly mean schoolteachers who glory in the failures of their stupid students.  There are mean-spirited women who hate Emily on principle and engage in an insidious sort of class warfare.  There is a horrible, nasty thief who makes off with some jewels and blackmails poor little Emily.  And then there is the insufferable, humourless governess who makes life absolutely miserable for poor, orphaned little Emily.  I never really figured out why, but I assume it was solely because the script was written that way.  Adults are mostly heinous, children are mostly innocent and whimsical.  Oh, such whimsy.

     That’s about it.  That’s the show.  Emily is this little drama queen, all the adults around her are clones of Bill Sykes and Harry Potter’s parents and more of the worst people in literature ever.  Every episode is about “how will we possibly save the house when we’re so poor”, or “how can I fix the misdeed I have committed” or “how can I get the boy I’m pretending to hate”.  All the same stuff in the fourth and final season, which ends abruptly.  And mercifully, as I have already said.

     Following Emily of New Moon, Martha MacIsaac went on to bigger and better things.  I almost put up a clip of her from Last House On The Left, because it contrasted so violently from the lovely Emily imagery.  But I couldn’t because it was so gratuitous that it offended me.  But not as much as Emily of New Moon offended me.  This show really thinks that all I need is hardship and suffering and ocean scenery and whimsical kids to think it’s artistic and heartfelt and charming and not terrible.  It’s wrong.  Just because it worked once with Road To Avonlea, doesn’t mean the template will work all the time.  Emily of New Moon doesn’t have Sarah Polley, and it doesn’t have the terrific supporting cast that made Avonlea succeed.

     I chose the Superbad clip up top because it shows how far Martha MacIsaac has come.  Having watched this entire show, beginning to end, over the course of a few months, I have become a worse person as a result.  How she managed to keep her head above this dreck is beyond me.  Season Four, the final season of Emily Of New Moon, comes out July 20th from Alliance Films.

Year:  2000
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Chuck Norris, Clarence Gilyard Jr, Nia Peeples, Sheree J. Wilson, Judson Mills
Guest Stars:  Mark Cuban, Sammo Hung, Tom Bosley, Ernest Borgnine, Michael Ironside, Dionne Warwick
Creator:  Paul Haggis
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I put the theme song for Walker, Texas Ranger up top because it is, I firmly believe, the greatest theme song in the history of television.  With the possible exception of the theme from Greatest American Hero.  I mean, really.  What is this all about?  “In the eyes of a Ranger…the unsuspecting stranger…had better know the truth of wrong from right”.  First of all, I think that’s actually Chuck Norris “singing”.  I didn’t bother checking because I don’t care.  And I don’t care because whether it is or is not Chuck Norris, it’s still hilariously dumb. 

     So…what I have gleaned so far is that as far as the Ranger (that’s obviously capitalized) is concerned, any “stranger” who walks into his neighbourhood had better instinctively understand the Ranger’s code of ethics, or he will get a very swift roundhouse kick to the back of the head.  How much more “unsuspecting” could a “stranger” be?  I don’t know.  And what, exactly, IS a stranger in Texas?  I could be going out on a crazy limb here, but I’m gonna say it could be someone who is different.  Like, not white.  More on that later.  More theme song first.

     “Cause the eyes of the Ranger are upon you…any wrong you do he’s gonna see…when you’re in Texas look behind you…’cause that’s where the Ranger’s gonna be”.  Okay.  So, The Ranger is like Santa Claus.  He knows when you’re being naughty, and he knows when you’re being nice.  Or maybe just naughty.  And he knows because he is always behind you.  Because now you’re in Texas.  And you’re a “stranger”.  And anyone who isn’t a Texas regular will be followed around by a Ranger, just out of sight, who will then spring into action, ninja-esque, right behind you when you…jaywalk…or spit on the sidewalk…or smuggle guns.  Whatever it may be.

     Frankly, if I wasn’t already a little afraid of pistol-packing Texas, then Walker, Texas Ranger is absolutely the worst public relations the Texas tourism board could imagine.  I  would never want to go to this state.  First of all, it’s basically a lawless frontier state, from what I gather.  When Texas Rangers go to arrest a man, or a few men, just showing them their badges and saying “we’re here to arrest you” isn’t enough.  Even if the culprit is just the owner of a sushi restaurant, who passed an envelope from one guy to another, he will automatically drop everything he’s doing and fight the cops.

     So first off, it is clear to me that everyone in Texas fights cops.  Everyone.  And that there are only seven people in the whole state with respect for the law, all of whom are family members of the cops.  Thank goodness that Walker guy has those karate skills!  Otherwise, he would be dead several times over.  As his partner says in season 8, “he’s been shot (clip of him being shot), his car’s been blown up (clip of explosion), he’s jumped from ONE hot air balloon to ANOTHER (clip of that event), and…I can’t remember where I was going with this.  Then again, neither could his partner in that particular episode.  Just an excuse to show clips, I guess.

     The scariest thing about Texas, apparently, is that this disregard for the law is so usual.  Every time the Rangers close in on their man, the bad guys decide to kill the Rangers.  Because that’s the first thing bad guys would think.  Let’s kill all the cops.  That will make our lives much easier.  In one episode, a white supremacist group murders a black judge.  And the Rangers aren’t even concerned about it.  They barely bat an eye, and I don’t think the execution of the judge is even brought up again in the episode.  Because killing judges is just like killing cops.  In Texas, it’s just a Tuesday.

     The most frightening thing about Texas, however, is a vibe I get from this show.  It’s the same vibe I get when I hear people say “I’m not racist, but…”  You know that guy.  The one who says “don’t get me wrong – I have lots of black friends” and the like.  Every time I hear that guy say that, I cringe.  And I brace myself for the awful statement that’s about to come.  This is the vibe I get from Walker.  The awful statement never comes, but the show is constantly saying to me “I have lots of black friends!  I like Chinese people!  We are all the same under the skin, and I firmly believe that!”  It smacks of effort, which creeps me out.

     For example, any episode involving a Vietnamese gang must also involve some Vietnamese people who are Good, and Decent, in a Saintly way.  One of them is a young frightened computer genius boy.  One is a wise martial arts expert grandfather.  And one, of course, is a dead cop.  Because it’s Wednesday.  And of course the grandfather is a martial arts expert.  After all, he’s Asian.  There is also a Chinese martial arts expert (Sammo Hung).  Walker has to make a point of saying that this guy is tough (as though his peers would find it hard to believe that a Chinese guy is tough) and that “I’m just glad he’s on our side”.

     And an inordinate amount of the episodes involve white supremacist groups, homegrown terrorists and other all-white evildoers.  Either Texas is just full of scary racists, and the Rangers are the only thing standing between them and ethnic cleansing, or the Rangers have been instilled with a spirit of political correctness that makes it easier for them to go after the crazy militia types.

     That being said, it’s just a creepy vibe, and I may be a little too sensitive about the whole thing.  After all, Walker (Chuck Norris) is a flawed human being.  I know this because the show makes sure to point out that although he has Santa-and-Jesus-like qualities, he is nervous about his wedding.  Some things DO scare Walker!  Hahaha…this is supposed to be the comic relief in Season Seven (out March 9th from Paramount Home Entertainment). 

     The season actually ends with that wedding.  Anyone willing to take bets that the wedding will be overrun by an all-star team of international terrorists?  No?  I’m not going to tell you.  You’ll have to watch Season Seven to find out…or you can just assume that it will happen, and that Walker will get the opportunity to kick more asses.

     Scary Movie (****4/10)

Year:  2000
Genre:  Horror, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Anna Faris, Marlon Wayans, Shawn Wayans, Cheri O’Teri, Shannon Elizabeth, Regina Hall, Carmen Electra
Eye candy:  Faris, Elizabeth, Hall, Electra
Director:  Keenan Ivory Wayans
Run time:  88 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     There’s nothing scary and very little funny about the first film in the Scary Movie series.  That being said, it stands the test of time far better than some more recent spoof movies, such as Meet The Spartans or Epic Movie, which are some of the worst films ever to reach a movie screen.  Faint praise, I know.  But there are enough decent moments in Scary Movie to make it worth checking out.  Like that final car scene.

     I think the biggest problem I have with Scary Movie, however, is that after spoofing Friday the 13th, Hallowe’en, Scream, I Know What You Did Last Summer, Nightmare on Elm Street and so forth, it seems to run out of films at the end.  All of a sudden there’s a scene where they spoof The Matrix?  Really?  If you ran out of horror films so fast, how could you make three more sequels so quickly?

     Scary Movie 2 (**2/10)

Year:  2001
Genre:  Horror, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Anna Faris, Natasha Lyonne, Regina Hall, Shawn Wayans, Marlon Wayans, David Cross, Chris Masterson, Andy Richter, James Woods, Tim Curry
Eye candy:  Faris, Lyonne, Hall
Cameos:  Tori Spelling, Chris Elliott
Director:  Keenan Ivory Wayans
Run time:  82 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     This time it’s haunted-house movies getting the Scary Movie watered-down spoof treatment.  The Exorcist, Scream (again), The Haunting, Poltergeist, Silence Of the Lambs and for some reason Mission:Impossible get spoofed here.  It’s the worst of the bunch, the one that thinks simply referencing other movies is funny enough, and that actual jokes are not needed at all.  Here’s the thing - they are.

     Scary Movie 3 (****4/10)

Year:  2003
Genre:  Horror, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Anna Faris, Anthony Anderson, Leslie Nielsen, Camryn Manheim, Simon Rex, George Carlin, Queen Latifah, Eddie Griffin, Denise Richards, Regina Hall, Charlie Sheen, Pamela Anderson, Jenny McCarthy, Jeremy Piven
Eye candy:  Faris, Richards, Hall, Anderson, McCarthy
Cameos:  Ja Rule, Raekwon, RZA, Fat Joe, Simon Cowell, D. L. Hughley, Macy Gray, Redman, U-God, Peter Boyle, Master P, William Forsythe, Method Man, Darrell Hammond
Director:  David Zucker
Run time:  88 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Scary Movie 3 is better than Scary Movie 2 – again, faint praise, I know.  The Wayans Brothers and their particularly scattershot brand of lampoon are gone, replaced by David Zucker (Airplane!).  He brings Leslie Nielsen along, which is a nice addition and change of pace in the series, and lampoons The Ring and Signs and so forth.  But again, he can’t help but spoof non-horror movies again (8 Mile, Independance Day, The Matrix again), and that brings the whole thing to yet another crashing halt.

     Scary Movie 4 (*****5/10)

Year:  2006
Genre:  Horror, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Anna Faris, Regina Hall, Anthony Anderson, Bill Pullman, Molly Shannon, Michael Madsen, Craig Bierko, Leslie Nielsen, Chris Elliott, Phil McGraw, Shaquille O’Neal, Cloris Leachman, Conchita Campbell
Eye candy:  Faris, Hall, Carmen Electra, Kendra Wilkinson, Holly Madison, Bridget Marquardt, Crystal Lowe, Christie Laing, Angelique Naude, Amber Borycki
Cameos:  Youngbloodz, Chingy, Lil’ Jon, Fabolous, Charlie Sheen, James Earl Jones, Andre Benjamin
Director:  David Zucker
Run time:  83 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The best of the four movies, by default I guess.  There is still the tendancy to merely reference other movies, and not actually mock them or spoof them.  And that still really sucks.  This one takes on horror movies nobody has seen (which really sucks) and also non-horror movies (which also sucks).  The Village – really?  How many people will get that?  That movie was awful, and no one went.  Then there’s Saw, The Grudge, War of the Worlds (so far so good…) and once again, inexplicably, Million Dollar Baby and Brokeback Mountain.

     The reason I say the fourth is the best, and it isn’t entirely by default, is that it simply has the most bonkers cast of any of the films.  Dr. Phil stars with Shaquille O’Neal and Carmen Electra?  That’s something you’ll likely never see again.  Which is more than I can say for the other three films.  I do still love you though, Anna Faris.

“You hit doctors too?”
“Dentists are easier.  They’re dumber.”

   Novocaine (*****5/10)

Year:  2001
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Steve Martin, Scott Caan, Keith David, Laura Dern, Helena Bonham Carter, Kevin Bacon
Director:  David Atkins
Run time:  95 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Novocaine is a strange movie.  Sometimes that’s a good kind of strange, like when Laura Dern does her overly chipper dental hygenist ice princess routine.  Sometimes it’s bad strange, like when Helena Bonham Carter does her act straight out of Fight Club.  That’s not to say Bonham Carter is bad in the film.  She isn’t.  But her act is straight.  Were she sending up her Fight Club role, it would have made a lot more sense and would have fit better into the movie.  But there is rarely a wink in her character, and her drug-addict temptress is, in many ways, too plausible for this film.

     Because Novocaine is, ostensibly, a comedy.  Now, it doesn’t appear to decide to be a comedy until half way through.  Until then, it’s just Steve Martin being a dentist.  He talks about teeth, he thinks about teeth, he has a nice relationship going with his hygenist, Laura Dern.  (Who, by the way, has perfect teeth.  Which is perfect for this movie.  I fell in love with Laura Dern when I was eleven and watched Jurassic Park in the theatre because of her teeth.  Seriously.  Magnificent teeth.)  Then Helena Bonham Carter shows up as a flaky weirdo patient, and although she is clearly a cracked out druggie, there is something appealing and sexy enough about her that I understand Martin sleeping with her.  Somewhat.

     After the dirty and understandably appealing sex, Bonham Carter makes off with a bunch of drugs from Martin’s office.  He tracks her down and runs afoul of her hothead maniac brother, who appears to be having a creepy incestuous relationship with her.  When the brother (Scott Caan) shows up dead in Martin’s house, his world begins to unravel around him.  Only then does the movie decide to start being a black comedy.  Caan is mostly irrelevant in the movie, despite a few memorable scenes, and so is Kevin Bacon in a cameo as a strangely self-conscious actor working on a role with the police department.  His dialogue with Martin about the audience watching them is meant to be clever and funny, but again it’s too self-consciously smarmy to get a laugh.

     I like most of the actors in Novocaine.  Steve Martin is more than adequate as the put-upon dentist (who ends up solving the mystery through…dentistry…through a myriad of plot twists and turns and Big Revelations), and Bonham Carter, despite playing her role too straight, is convincingly predatory and, alternately, vulnerable.  Dern is terrific, the best actor in the movie, and Elias Koteas is solid as Martin’s ne’er do well brother.  But the movie changes gears so rapidly that it loses any momentum it may have built up, and it ends up feeling more like a made-for-TV movie with a solid cast than a good film.

   “Nothing more appealing than a woman who’s proud to be in her own body.”

   Dr. T and the Women (*****5/10)

Year:  2000
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Richard Gere, Andy Richter
Eye candy:  Farrah Fawcett, Helen Hunt, Tara Reid, Shelley Long, Laura Dern, Kate Hudson, Liv Tyler
Director:  Robert Altman
Run time:  121 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Robert Altman has made some of the great movies in American history.  Nashville, Gosford Park, Short Cuts, and the recent, wonderful A Prairie Home Companion.  When he’s on his game, he’s terrific.  But when he’s off, he makes Dr. T And The Women.  It’s a decent movie, but it’s certainly no Nashville.  Richard Gere plays the titular “Dr. T” (no pun intended), a gynecologist who is all attractive and stuff.  Women seem to want to flock to him so he can examine them.  Which is a little strange to me.  The movie presents the job of “gynecologist” as the envy of all his friends, and the dream job for men.

     I find this to be unlikely in both cases.  First of all, as a gynecologist, I don’t think anyone would refer to their job as “getting” to look at vaginas.  Were I a gynecologist (and I’m a pervert) I would likely refer to my profession as “having” to look at vaginas.  You know, when they have problems.  And every woman I know would be far less likely to want to be examined by an attractive man when they are having those problems.  Maybe I’m wrong, and Robert Altman is right.  If I ever meet a gynecologist, I will ask him.  Until then, I will be skeptical of this film.

     The biggest problem with the movie, though, is not little things like that.  It’s that by the end of the two hour movie, I didn’t know a single one of the main characters.  Richard Gere is a likeable guy – in fact, he is presented as an almost-saint who is worshipful of women and puts them up on pedestals and so forth.  It is suggested – really – that his wife (Farrah Fawcett) has gone crazy because he loves her too much.  Her life is so perfect, that she went totally nuts.  The scene where she does go nuts is certainly memorable, coming right at the beginning of the movie as it does.  The still-stunning 53-year-old Fawcett gets completely naked and dances around in a shopping mall fountain in a display of youthful insanity.

     With Fawcett’s recent untimely passing, however, it would be too bad if people remembered her for that scene, or for this movie.  She’s decent at playing the airheaded space cadet, but her descent into insanity is almost entirely irrelevant to the rest of the movie, and feels really incongruous once the movie moves along.  The movie is really about Richard Gere finding love with golf pro Helen Hunt while his wife is in the loony bin.  But aside from the vague references to his worship of women and his kindly nature, we never learn anything about him.  And we don’t really learn a single thing about Hunt, ever.  Except that she can on occasionally seem like something of a shrew.

     In fact, almost all the women in this movie are irritating.  And there are a lot of them.  As the title suggests.  They are either vapid, or dreadfully self-centred, or obnoxious.  Dr. T and his wife have two daughters, played by Tara Reid and Kate Hudson, and they might be the two most interesting women in the film.  But Reid is still an irritating, overly opinionated conspiracy theorist, and Hudson is a self-absorbed picture of vanity.  One of the most interesting things going on in the movie is the relationship between Hudson and her friend Liv Tyler, who may or may not be lovers.

     But for a movie about a man who worships women, this film really seems to dislike women a fair amount.  Without a man around to support their every whim, women fall apart or become dreadfully annoying.  And although Dr. T seems to know more about women than anyone else in the film, including the women themselves, he sure doesn’t share any of that insight with us.  By the time the movie ends, we have learned nothing about Dr. T, nothing about women, and I’m not really sure why the movie was made at all.

     Now, I’m really not sure why Alliance Films decided to release these two movies as a double feature on a single DVD on August 4th.  Maybe it’s Laura Dern?  She appears in both films.  Maybe it’s a Laura Dern double feature?  Or maybe it’s because both movies are almost-comedies?  I don’t know.  But it’s not a bad idea, because I think if people like one they will like the other.  I’m just not sure I liked either one.

“Never Give Up.  Never Surrender.”

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      Galaxy Quest managed to be two things at once when it was released in 2000.  Totally generic, and totally new.  And the terrific balance between the two was what made it terrific.  I really, really like Galaxy Quest.  It’s generic in that it tells the story of people we’ve seen in movies many times before, every character is a cliche, the plot follows the same arc as almost every other movie ever made, and it involves Tim Allen.  It’s new in that the generic nature of the characters and plot are done on purpose.  And the casting of Tim Allen was actually a good idea.  And showing Sigourney Weaver’s cleavage the whole movie is totally hot, but with a reason.  Just about everything in this movie works.

     Galaxy Quest has clearly been released, by Paramount Home Entertainment on May 12th, as part of Star Trek week.  With the new movie doing crazy box office in the theatres, everything Star Trek-related will have a market.  I hope Galaxy Quest gets a bump from this crowd, because it’s better than ANY of the Star Trek movies.  Well, maybe Wrath of Khan.  The idea is that Galaxy Quest is a TV show just like Star Trek.  And it has a crazy, rabid, nerdy following of people who are obsessed with the minutiae of the show, just like Trekkies.  And the actors who starred on the show have done nothing with their lives or careers since the show ended, and make their money attending the nerdy conventions.  Just like…well, you get the picture.

     The characters are fantastic – Tim Allen plays the Shatner role, the commander of the Starfleet, the Big Star everyone is waiting to see.  Sure, he hasn’t worked in years, but he loves the fans and loves being adored, even though he’s a broken-down deluded old superstar outside the convention circuit.  Sigourney Weaver was the big-boobed, all-cleavage eye candy on the show, although she had no role other than repeating what the computer said.  She still looks spectacular years later.  Alan Rickman might be the best character in the movie.  His character on Galaxy Quest was an alien of some kind, with weird makeup and a funny head.  And he is constantly bemoaning the fact that he was once a serious actor, and a GOOD actor, but now he’s reduced to this convention stuff which is so much beneath him.

     Also solid are Tony Shalhoub as a stoner actor who goes to the conventions because he doesn’t care about anything, and Sam Rockwell as an actor who appeared in one episode of Galaxy Quest and was killed in the first two minutes.  Like an ensign on Star Trek.  Justin Long shows up in an early role as the Nerdiest Of The Nerds, the Biggest Galaxy Quest Fan In The World.  Just as a spoof on “what might have happened to the cast of Star Trek” movie about the conventions and the actors who frequent them, this film would have worked.  But instead they tell a story along the most generic arc of all – rock bottom, followed by a deception that lifts them out of the dumps, followed by a conflict they attempt to escape, followed by the revelation of their deception, and then of course their collective redemption.

     This story arc comes courtesy of a group of ACTUAL aliens who have seen the old Galaxy Quest episodes which have somehow been beamed into outer space.  They believe that the episodes they have seen are “historical documents” of this group of people on Earth, and they think this crew can save them from an evil menacing alien race of bug-looking creepy things.  Which is basically the plot of Seven Samurai, or Magnificent Seven, or, more accurately, The Three Amigos.  The actors at first have no idea what they’re getting themselves into, but once they realize that they are, really, in space, they decide to make the best of it.

     It’s the little touches that make Galaxy Quest so good.  Most of those touches come before the crew are actually in space.  The scene where the cast are opening a shopping mall in front of a small gathering of loyal geeks is priceless.  Tim Allen is (dare I say) actually good as a Shatner-esque actor in love with his own reflection, and the scenes involving Justin Long as the crazy nerd trying to figure out some tiny detail about the spaceship and the flux-filtration system (or whatever it is – I didn’t write it down) are where Allen really shines.  And little things like Allen’s cheesy line from every Galaxy Quest episode - “Never give up.  Never surrender.” – are what make this movie so clever.  It SEEMS like a tough-guy, outer-space sci-fi type line, but really it’s redundant nonsense.

     The deluxe edition of Galaxy Quest comes out May 12th from Paramount Home Entertainment, and includes several bonus features.  Historical Documents: The Story Of ‘Galaxy Quest’, Never Give Up.  Never Surrender: The Intrepid Crew of the NSEA Protector, By Grabthar’s Hammer What Amazing Effects, and some deleted scenes and actor features.  It’s a movie that has been forgotten over the past ten years, but it remains as good as ever, maybe even better with time.  Pick up Galaxy Quest, it’s certainly worth it.

I must admit that, although I have slammed both Mission: Impossible and especially Mission: Impossible 2 many times, seeing them on Blu-Ray has caused me to give both of them an extra star.  Blu-Ray really is the ideal format for slick, visual action movies with no soul, and these two flicks certainly qualify.  The two films come out together, as a package, on Blu-Ray for the first time March 17th, from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Really, this set is for people who already enjoyed the movies, and want to see them kick ass in high-def.  The way I watched them, they merely sucked a little less in high-def.  But that is something.

Mission: Impossible (*******7/10)

“This is the Mount Everest of hacks.”

A phrase used, in the film, to describe the task of hacking into the CIA computer.  But one that could also apply to the direction of Brian De Palma, a terrific director of such films as Scarface and The Untouchables.  De Palma has always been fairly good, but with movies like those two he was really working above his level.  De Palma is, really, the absolute top of the heap of hack directors in movies.  He is the best, but he’s just a very, very good hack.  And Mission: Impossible is the Mount Everest of movies made almost entirely by hacks.

That does not extend to the cast – Jon Voight is by no means a hack, nor is Emmanuelle Beart or Henry Czerny or Jean Reno.  Even Tom Cruise is not a hack.  I might give you Ving Rhames.  But he is at least a very, very good hack, and the perfect actor for roles such as the one he plays in this film.  But the script is weak, the direction able at best, and the special effects are pretty good.  But the story is basically nonsense, the special effects are gratuitous, and there is a ton of unnecessary gadgetry and computer hacking and manufactured tense moments.  The opening scene is the first and best example of this – they’re trying to catch a guy after he steals a thing, but rather than just sit there and wait for him and then catch him, they have to use fifty computers and wires and fake faces and sneaking around.  Why?  No reason.  It just looks cool and they have all this crap to use.

Then Emilio Estevez dies, real early on, and the conspiracy that is setting up Tom Cruise gets (sort of) explained, and the movie is under way.  Fortunately for those of us watching this in HD on Blu-Ray, much of the time Cruise is accompanied by Emmanuelle Beart, one of the hottest women ever to grace a film screen.  (For those of you who might watch this movie just for her, I might recommend a different film – La Belle Noiseuse, a French art film where Beart plays a nude model who inspires an artist and spends the entire movie pretty much naked.  Not only that, but the film is absolutely brilliant.  Far more so than Mission: Impossible.  It’s available on DVD, but not Blu-Ray.)

“Ethan, you’re not making any sense.”

Ethan Hunt, played by Tom Cruise, really doesn’t make a lot of sense if you really sit and pick apart this movie.  But of course, that is not the idea here.  The idea is to sit back and let wave after wave of mindless entertainment wash over us as Mission: Impossible draws to it’s obvious conclusion, after an unnecessary break-in to CIA headquarters, and several scenes where no character asks the obvious questions that would lead to a faster resolution or questions the obvious flaws in the plans.  If you’re not willing to shut off your brain, ignore this film.  If you are willing to do so, you could do a lot worse than Mission: Impossible.  It is an awful lot of fun in Blu-Ray.

Mission: Impossible 2 (****4/10):

“This is not Mission Difficult, Mr. Hunt, it’s Mission Impossible.”

Good thing Anthony Hopkins put Tom Cruise in his place like that early on in this film.  Otherwise, we might be confused into thinking this was a James Bond movie, or a Hong Kong Chow Yun-Fat action flick.  Or both.  Thank goodness we keep being reminded that it’s Mission: Impossible 2! 

Years:  2000, 2001
Genre:  TV series, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Melissa Joan Hart, Beth Broderick, Caroline Rhea, Soleil Moon Frye, Elisa Donovan, Trevor Lissauer
Creator:  Nell Scovell
Run time:  8 hours
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I wonder if Triumph ever sued the makers of Sabrina, The Teenage Witch (the TV series) over their obvious ripoff of “Magic Power” for the opening credit theme.  I doubt it.  I think there is a good chance the guys in Triumph never watched the show.  You see, when you’re that busy being a constantly-touring second-rate power trio, you don’t have that much time to watch a constantly-airing, second-rate TV show.  I do remember this show, to some degree.  I don’t think I watched it much, what with being holed up in my room in the year 2000 with my Triumph records.  But I certainly remember Melissa Joan Hart, who was likely more famous than the series itself.  But by the time I took down one of my Triumph posters to make room for a Melissa Joan Hart poster, the show had been canceled and I had lost interest.

     The biggest problem with the series is that it is irritating.  The fact that Sabrina is a witch is basically irrelevant.  Every episode centres around silly young-woman shenanigans that you can get on any sitcom from the same era.  The only time her “magic powers” ever come in handy is when the writers seem to run out of quirky college highjinks with which to work, and Sabrina spends an episode in an alternate universe or the realm of witches, or whatever.  In the meantime, she has a talking cat.  Because she’s a witch.  In the Fifth Season, out on DVD February 17th from Paramount Home Entertainment, Sabrina has moved out of her house for the first time so she can go to college.  She now has roommates, and that’s where all the action is.

     And that’s the best thing about Sabrina, The Teenage Witch.  The casting.  Melissa Joan Hart really is very good as Sabrina, she is cute and charming, and suitably wide-eyed and naive.  Her aunts are funny and attractive and splendidly portrayed by Caroline Rhea and Beth Broderick.  In Season Five, her new roommates are Roxie, played by a gorgeous and talented young woman named Soleil Moon Frye, who used to be Punky Brewster.  Morgan, played by Elisa Donovan, is pretty and self-centred, another funny character.  And Miles is the nerdy super-genius, ably played by Trevor Lissauer.

     All these solid actors, however, can’t quite make up for the generic writing and the painfully ordinary nature of this show.  I like Sabrina, and I like Melissa Joan Hart, but watching an entire season is taxing at best.