Years:  2006, 2007
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English, French
Starring:  Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Pauley Perrette, Sean Murray, David McCallum, Brian Dietzen, Cote De Pablo, Lauren Holly
Creator:  Donald P. Bellisario, Don McGill
Run time:  16 hours, 49 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Season four of NCIS continues where Season Three left off – with an irritating run of shows that try really hard to put the main characters in personal danger.  A lot of shows do that when they run out of other ideas.  NCIS is still solid, thanks to the cast and characters, and there’s some good writing, but I just can’t stand the episodes where DiNozzo tries desperately to make time for his new girlfriend, or where McGee struggles with writers’ block after the huge success of his last novel.  Or where Gibbs awkwardly works things out with a new girlfriend, or DiNozzo does secret undercover work for the director, or Ducky and Gibbs get sour with each other over Gibbs’ attempt to retire.  And that’s most every episode in Season Four.

     The French dubbing that made these Paramount Home Entertainment re-releases necessary is still adequate, although every single character (except Abby) takes on a totally different persona thanks to the voices.  Wait – necessary?  No…I think that might have been the wrong word.  Convenient?  Plausible?  I don’t know.  Either way, it gave me a chance to watch the first four seasons for the first time.  And complain though I do, I DID watch them all.  Four full seasons over the course of my two-week vacation, every time I wasn’t watching the fifth season of Dexter or the third season of The United States of Tara, or the final season of Secret Diary of a Call Girl.  That’s what NCIS is good for.  A diversion between other entertainments – one that I keep returning to, no matter how much I complain!

Years:  2005, 2006
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English, French
Starring:  Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherly, Sasha Alexander, Pauley Perrette, Sean Murray, David McCallum, Brian Dietzen, Cote De Pablo, Lauren Holly
Creator:  Donald P. Bellisario, Don McGill
Run time:  17 hours, 37 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Season three is when NCIS started to go downhill for me – I guess someone, somewhere got the idea that Sasha Alexander was not hot enough, and they replaced Caitlin with Ziva (Cote De Pablo), I guess figuring she was hotter.  And just in case that wasn’t enough eye candy to make NCIS even more successful, they added Lauren Holly as the director of NCIS, and Gibbs’ on-again-off-again love interest. 

     My biggest problem is Ziva.  Mark Harmon as Gibbs is irritating enough.  The whole team lives in fear of Gibbs and his wrath and his badassery, but it never actually comes up.  Gibbs never actually does anything to justify this respectful fear.  And Ziva is the same.  She is a Mossad assassin, ostensibly, who has now been added to the team – she is now the Most Lethal NCIS Member, and she can kill you with a spoon or a fork or a garlic press as soon as look at you…except that she never does.  Whenever Ziva has to subdue some out-of-control suspect, or a soldier on PCP, the guy will come at her, everyone will run down the hall to help, and they will open the doors to find the bad guy subdued and bleeding on the floor.  It’s pretty rare that we get to see Ziva actually kicking any ass at all.  So it’s all just words.

     That means that the only thing the character of Ziva adds to the cast (aside from the admirable hotness of Cote De Pablo of course) is her awkward grasp of English.  She seems to exist solely to butcher common English sayings and have DiNozzo correct her.  She’ll say something like, “you can’t see the jungle for the ferns”, or “does a bear sit in the woods”, and then someone will have to correct her, and I guess it’s supposed to get a laugh.

     The thing is, these DVDs have been re-released by Paramount Home Entertainment (August 2nd) because they have added French dubbing.  That’s fine, except Ziva’s butchered colloquialisms don’t really translate into another language.  She’s the multi-lingual member of the team, the only one who speaks French, and she’s a totally useless character in that language.  Well, not entirely useless.  Her French dubbed voice makes her sound like a ten-year-old Justin Bieber fan.  And that really works here, because every time she talks, it’s either to say something charmingly inept, or to re-assert, yet again, her badass bonafides.  And sounding like a ten-year-old girl when she does is hilarious.  I think, in fact, I like Season Three better in French.  7/10 in French!

     Alliance Films is releasing The King’s Speech on DVD April 19th, and also The Royal Collection box set.  Which contains The King’s Speech, The Queen, The Young Victoria, Shakespeare In Love, and Vanity Fair.  At first, I assumed the box set was being released to celebrate the Oscar success of The King’s Speech (Best Picture, Best Actor for Colin Firth). 

     On closer examination, however, it says quite clearly on the box – this DVD set is being released to commemorate the Royal Wedding!  That Prince William Kate Middleton thing coming up in a couple of weeks.  I guess the idea is that people will buy the box, get their royal on for a couple of weeks, and be extra-pumped for the Big Day involving people they have never met and will likely never pay attention to again.

     I like most of the movies on this set.  I think that some are great.  I hope people DO buy this box set, because a lot of these films are worth owning.  But if you buy it in preparation for the royal wedding, I will think less of you.  Much less.  Just saying.  Anyway, here are the five films, and their accompanying reviews.

The King’s Speech (********8/10)

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Year:  2010
Genre:  Drama, History, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Helena Bonham Carter, Jennifer Ehle, Guy Pearce, Timothy Spall, Michael Gambon, Derek Jacobi
Director:  Tom Hooper
Run time:  111 minutes

     It seems that there is a fairly easy formula to follow when it comes to making a run at a bunch of Oscars.  Make a period piece starring mostly British actors about a British monarch.  (The Queen, Elizabeth: The Golden Age, Peter O’Toole, Laurence Olivier, Kenneth Branagh, Vanessa Redgrave…and so on.)  Now, if only there were some way to get Nazis into the movie also, it would be a shoo-in, right?  As it turns out, yes.

     The King’s Speech, of course, deals very little with actual Nazis.  The scourge of Hitler and his war in Europe serve only as the catalyst for the speech of the title.  King George VI (Colin Firth), in 1939, had to speak to all of Great Britain in a radio address on the occasion of the declaration of war against Germany at the beginning of World War II.  In order to make this incredibly important speech, the king sought the help of speech therapist Lionel Logue (Geoffrey Rush) in an effort to correct his rather pronounced stammer.  Logue’s methods are not exactly traditional, and he insists upon calling the new king by his childhood pet name, Bertie.

     The stutter tends to come out of Bertie only when he is nervous or flustered, which seems to be most of the time.  He and Logue delve deep into his childhood, in increments, over the course of the movie, but it’s never clear whether some childhood trauma caused the stammer, or if there is a breakthrough of any kind on that front.  Really, this is just a story about two men from two distinctly different classes becoming friends and learning to trust each other.  Logue is a failed Australian actor with a certain amount of disdain for the monarchy, Bertie has spent his whole life shielded from the common class by the bubble that surrounds the royal family.

     And that, along with the performances by Rush and Firth, is the strength of the movie.  The class distinctions are drawn expertly, and the attention to detail in the costumes and backdrops is remarkable.  The strange thing for me though is that the King overcoming his speech difficulties is actually the second most interesting thing happening in the film.  At the time, and in the history of the British monarchy, the biggest story of the past hundred years was the abdication of the throne by Bertie’s playboy brother Edward (Guy Pearce) so he could marry thrice-divorced Wallis Simpson (Eve Best).  That was a gigantic scandal at the time, and remains one of the most interesting stories in the history of the British royals.

     The fact that Edward’s abdication and carelessness are treated as a minor subplot irks me a little.  It seems to be thrown into the movie more as a way to show the callousness with which Edward treats Bertie than as a seriously large event.  It’s a minor quibble though with an otherwise terrific movie.  British royalty period pieces always get nominated for Oscars.  But they rarely interest me throughout, and even more rarely do they manage not to bore me.  The King’s Speech is NOT the best movie made this year.  Even though won Best Picture, as it was designed to do.  But it IS one of the best British period films made in a long time.  And that makes it well worth seeing for anyone.

The Queen (*********9/10)

Year:  2006
Genre:  Drama, History, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Helen Mirren, Michael Sheen, James Cromwell, Helen McCrory, Alex Jennings, Roger Allam, Sylvia Syms, Mark Bazeley, Earl Cameron, Tim McMullan
Director:  Stephen Frears
Run time:  101 minutes

     Although Helen Mirren has long been one of the most respected British actresses in the world, it wasn’t until The Queen in 2006 that she attained real international celebrity to go along with the accolades.  A Best Actress Oscar win will do that.  Or maybe it was just that the world needed 27 years to get the taste of Caligula out of their collective mouths.  No pun intended.  Actually hey – this is a royal box set!  Shouldn’t it contain Caligula as well?

     This same year, as Mirren was winning an Oscar for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth II in The Queen, she was also winning several awards for her portrayal of Queen Elizabeth I in a made-for-TV miniseries.  That made this her definitive role, almost 40 years into her magnificent career.

     Michael Sheen, on the other hand, stars here in HIS definitive role, one that he managed to score in only his third starring appearance in a movie.  That movie was 2003′s The Deal, helmed by Stephen Frears, a TV docudrama about Tony Blair and Gordon Brown opposing Margaret Thatcher.  His remarkable resemblance to Tony Blair gave Michael Sheen a role for life.  In The Queen, also helmed by Frears, he played Blair for the second time.  And then again in The Special Relationship.  And likely many more times to come.  People are, right now, dreaming up movie scripts about Tony Blair simply because Michael Sheen exists.

     The two are wonderful in The Queen, which is the best movie in this set.  In addition to Sheen and Mirren, a fantastic script from Peter Morgan.  At the beginning, Queen Elizabeth and Blair are just as we expect them to be – almost comical in a way, as our perceptions of the Queen’s regal attitude border on silliness.  Then, halfway through, the tone of the film changes entirely, and we get a deep, serious look at the doubts that plague both protagonists.

     As the Queen herself, Mirren is flawless.  She is not just regal, she exudes authority by her very presence.  And while it may be easy to laugh at the frivolities of the archaic monarchy, it’s a nervous laughter we experience when the subject of the mockery is also a truly intimidating personality.  This movie works beginning to end, and is very close to being absolutely perfect.

The Young Victoria (******6/10)

Year:  2009
Genre:  Drama, History, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Emily Blunt, Rupert Friend, Paul Bettany, Miranda Richardson, Jim Broadbent, Thomas Kretschmann, Mark Strong
Director:  Jean-Marc Vallee
Run time:  100 minutes

     It’s got costumes!  And royalty!  And soul-searching and wistful longing and staring and pageantry!  What more could you ask for in a royalty-themed British-accented period piece?  Well, more Oscars, maybe.  No Oscars for The Young Victoria, which at heart is a pretty pedantic if sumptuous entry into the familiar royals-when-they-were-young category of movies.

     Emily Blunt is suitably icy-fiery as the young Queen Victoria, as she ascended to the throne as a teenager.  Of course, being unmarried, who she chose as a husband carried with it international implications.  All that is fine, but how much actual ruling did she do?  Who cares – the only thing that can make a royalty-themed period piece appeal even more to people who like royalty-themed period pieces is a romance.  In this case, the romantic entanglement comes courtesy Prince Albert (Rupert Friend).

     To be fair, The Young Victoria does, in fact, involve a fair amount of country-ruling.  The only problem is that much of the problems Victoria faces as the young, inexperienced monarch of a country are seen through the prism of the romance, which has to be the central theme of the movie.  The Young Victoria is decent, and had it been actually good, it might have won Oscars.  Costumes, British accents, and romanceromanceromance!  It hit all the bases.  2009 must have been a very disappointing Oscar year for this average movie.

Shakespeare In Love (******6/10)

Year:  1998
Genre:  Drama, History, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Colin Firth, Geoffrey Rush, Joseph Fiennes, Gwyneth Paltrow, Judi Dench, Simon Callow, Imelda Staunton, Ben Affleck, Tom Wilkinson, Jim Carter, Martin Clunes, Rupert Everett
Director:  John Madden
Run time:  122 minutes

     One of the most undeserving Oscar winners in recent memory was Judi Dench.  Not that she wasn’t fantastic in her role as Queen Elizabeth I in Shakespeare in Love, but she had about four minutes of screen time.  Best Supporting Actress?  Usually that means you were in the movie. 

     One of the least deserving Best Actress Oscar winners in recent memory was Gwyneth Paltrow.  Not that she wasn’t super-hot in Shakespeare In Love, and passable as the charming Lady Viola who disguises herself to appear as a man in stage plays.  But the role really, in the end, had little substance.  Joseph Fiennes, as Shakespeare, was better.  But he was not even considered for a Best Actor, really.  Maybe because he’s Joseph Fiennes.

     And perhaps the least-deserving Best Picture Oscar winner in decades…Shakespeare In Love!  Oh, it’s a decent movie.  It’s even above-average, and the screenplay really is wonderful (and the screenplay DID deserve an Oscar).  And not to rehash all the bad blood from a decade ago, but here’s a quick list of films that did NOT win the Oscar in 1998…The Thin Red Line, Out of Sight, Lock Stock and Two Smoking Barrels, Elizabeth, Life Is Beautiful…oh never mind.  Here’s one title to sum it all up -Saving Private Ryan.

     So now that I’ve complained, all over again, about the Oscar travesty of 1998, I will now turn my attention to another complaint.  How come this movie is in the “royalty” box set?  Was it that four minutes of Judi Dench as Queen Elizabeth?  Or does “royalty” now just mean “British people in costumes”?

Vanity Fair (****4/10)

Year:  2004
Genre:  Drama, Period
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Reese Witherspoon, Romola Garai, James Purefoy, Jonathan Rhys-Meyers, Rhys Ifans, Gabriel Byrne, Jim Broadbent, Bob Hoskins, Ruth Sheen
Director:  Mira Nair
Run time:  140 minutes

     William Makepeace Thackeray’s novel was a biting, caustic satire of the British class system.  Here, Vanity Fair (and its heroine, Becky Sharp) get some serious star power from Reese Witherspoon.  And a serious dumbing-down from screenwriters and directors and producers and everyone else involved with the film.  In the novel, Becky is a very unlikeable, unsympathetic heroine.  At times, even downright detestable.

     In this 2004 movie, Becky has all her hard edges dulled, her more caustic personality traits eliminated, and even at her absolute worst, Witherspoon makes sure that Becky remains charming and likeable.  Which has the effect of completely missing the point of the whole story.  When bad things happen to Becky, we feel like the world is being unfair, and we feel sorry for her.  Poor Becky, things are going from bad to worse!

     That’s not the Becky I expect.  This ambitious, backstabbing, vicious social climber is not to be pitied, she is getting what’s coming to her.  And, in fact, not nearly enough of what ought to be coming to her.  But this movie simply refuses to make her unsympathetic.  Or maybe it’s in Reese Witherspoon’s contract.  “I MUST play a charming rogue at worst!”

     One thing I will say for this version of Vanity Fair – it’s the only movie I have ever seen where the main character is named Becky but she is NOT perky with a pony tail and tight track pants with headphones on.  So…that’s something.  And once again, I would point out that just because it’s a period piece does not make it a “royalty” movie.  That connection is tenuous at best for the worst movie in this box set.

Year:  2006, 2007, 2008
Genre:  Kids, Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jamie Lynn Spears, Victoria Justice, Sean Flynn, Erin Sanders, Christopher Massey, Matthew Underwood, Paul Butcher
Guest stars:  Daniella Monet, Miranda Cosgrove  
Director:  Steve Hoefer
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Initially, when watching Zoey 101 Season Three, out March 8th from Alliance Films, I was watching for Victoria Justice, who is a peppy, interesting actress and I’m sure will grow into a beautiful, cool young actress with a bright future.  She recently turned 18, so I’m looking forward to her doing some more adult fare – stuff I can sit through without cringing or rolling my eyes.

     And that’s all I was really doing with Zoey 101.  Because once you get past Victoria Justice, there’s not much to this program.  It was cancelled after four seasons, I suppose because the kids got too old to plausibly play 13-year-olds.  Not that they ever were.  Or maybe everyone stopped watching.  Or maybe someone, somewhere, discvovered that Jamie Lynn Spears can’t act any better than her more famous sister in Crossroads.

     Either way, this was the next-to-last season of Zoey 101, and I’ll try to encapsulate the season briefly.  Some character who was on the show last season is gone, diagnosed with Obsessive Male Gender Disorder.  This “diagnosis” is really just an excuse for a bunch of different characters to say the phrase “OMGD”.  “OMGD”?  “OMGD”!  Get it? Hilarious, huh?  And…that’s about the best they can do, humour-wise.  (The real reason the character left, apparently, was that the actress who played her fought with Jamie Lynn Spears off the set, and the producers decided to keep the one whose last name was Spears.)

     The rest of the “humour” this season comes from Zoey (Spears) and Lola (Justice) and their new roommate Quinn, who is a big nerd.  You can tell because she wears glasses and only big nerds wear glasses in shows that are too stupid to try.  Also – big nerds are also super smart at everything.  Which means Quinn is always experimenting on something – she lets a rat loose in their dorm room!  She unleashes a super-germ on the campus!  She does other insane gross things…hahaha…blurp.

     By the time the show got to the two-part episode that involved a ghost (and not one of those Scooby-Doo ghosts that was actually the old man from the amusement park and a fog machine, but a REAL ghost), I was done.  Canceled.  I still think Justice has a bright future, but even her star dulls somewhat after several episodes of Zoey 101.  I initially loved Justice in the iCarly special iFight Shelby Marx. 

     It would be pretty easy, actually, to compare Zoey 101 to iCarly.  Both are Nickelodeon shows starring young girls aimed at young girls.  But when Miranda Cosgrove showed up for a cameo in one of the Zoey 101 episodes later in Season Three, it really hammered home how different these shows are.  See, one has a star with skill.  And it appears as though the cast is having fun making the show.  And it makes me laugh.  The other is Zoey 101.

     Back in January, First Run Features released a four-disc box set featuring movies from Global Lens: Africa.  Global Lens brings some of the most remarkable films from around the world to DVD, and it’s great to be able to explore films from countries no one would think of as movie hotbeds.  For example, on this set there are movies from Angola and Burkina Faso, two countries that I don’t associate with movie making, and to be honest they are two countries about which I barely think at all.  The four movies are…

Another Man’s Garden (*********9/10)

Year:  2006
Genre:  Drama
Countries:  Mozambique, Portugal, France
Language:  Portugese w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Gigliola Zacara, Evaristo Abreu
Director:  Jose Candido de Carvalho
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     My favourite movie in the set, Another Man’s Garden tells the story of Sophia, a young woman in Mozambique with aspirations to become a doctor.  While the culture in the country is progressive enough to give a young girl a chance to go to medical school, it is still regressive enough to make it incredibly difficult for that girl to get there.  Sophia is being pressured by a teacher at school – if she doesn’t have sex with him, he will fail her, and she will never become a doctor. 

     This appears to be a common problem – Sophia’s friend has slept with a teacher already, and it is a pervasive problem throughout the school.  So much so that it seems nothing can be done about it, and the teachers regularly die of AIDS.  Although it’s a huge worry to the girls that they may catch it if they sleep with their teachers, they are still put in an untenable position with little choice.

     Sophia’s moral dilemma is compounded by her boyfriend’s infidelity, her father’s infirmity, her siblings’ dependance and her mother’s apathy.  More serious even than the threats of her teacher is the attitude of her mother who believes what appears to be an old local adage – “educating a girl is like tending another man’s garden”.  Another Man’s Garden is subtle but strong, and strangely uplifiting, featuring some great performances by the women in the film.

Hollow City (*******7/10)

Year:  2004
Genre:  Drama
Country:  Angola
Language:  Portugese w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Roldan Pinto Joao, Domingos Fernandes, Raul Rosario, Julia Botelho, Ana Bustorff
Director:  Maria Joao Ganga
Run time:  88 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Hollow City reminds me of a few other movies, like Sweet Sixteen and films of that nature.  Young N’Dala has just witnessed the murder of his entire family and the burning of his village.  Now orphaned, he is brought to the big city by well-intentioned nuns, who tell him that his family is now up in the sky.  Of course, he believes that they are ONLY in the sky over his particular village, so he must get home to find them.

     He sneaks out of the nuns’ custody and starts to make his way through the big city, where he makes friends with Ze, a young aspiring actor who helps N’Dala hide and eventually finds him a place to live.  The 12-year-old little boy is surrounded by crime – prostitution, drugs, violence – but he is too naive to see it until it’s too late.  Because of the little boy’s innocence, and his desire to look on the bright side of everything, the film is a very cheerful one, right up to the surprising, very sad (if a little forced) conclusion.

The Night Of Truth (*******7/10)

Year:  2004
Genre:  Drama
Countries:  Burkina Faso, France
Language:  French, Moore & Dioula w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Naky Sy Savane, Georgette Pare, Adam Ouedraogo, Rasmane Ouedraogo, Sami Rama
Director:  Fanta Regina Nacro
Run time:  100 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     A long-running conflict is on the verge of ending, as the Bonande tribe is about to sign a peace treaty with their enemies, the Nayak.  While the leaders of both tribes see the value in peace and are willing to let bygones be bygones, not everyone is so enamoured with the prospect.  Many of the women in each tribe continue to harbor deep-seeded hatred of the other side, as they have lost sons and brothers and husbands to the conflict. 

     Through the tortured actions of grieving women, and images of war, and drums, we are constantly reminded during the film just what the cost of civil war and genocide really is.  It’s a powerful and somehow hopeful film, with some images that remain in my head several days later.  My one complaint is that there are a couple of unnecessary characters who drag the film almost entirely to a halt every time they’re on the screen.  But that’s a minor problem in an otherwise terrific movie.

Bunny Chow (*******7/10)

Year:  2006
Genre:  Drama, Comedy
Countries:  South Africa
Language:  English, and Afrikaans w/ English subtitles
Starring:  David Kibuuka, Joey Rasdien, Kagiso Lediga, Keren Neumann, Jason Cope
Director:  John Barker
Run time:  95 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

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

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

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

Years:  2004, 2005, 2006, 2007
Genre:  TV series, comedy, sitcom
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kevin James, Leah Remini, Patton Oswalt, Lou Ferrigno, Jerry Stiller, Victor Williams, Gary Valentine
Guest stars:  Tucker Carlson, Rampage Jackson, Burt Reynolds, Nicole Sullivan, Adam Sandler, Adam West, Robert Goulet, Huey Lewis, Kirstie Alley, Randy Couture
Creators:  David Litt, Michael J. Weithorn
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I like Kevin James and Jerry Stiller and PAtton Oswalt and the rest of the cast of King of Queens.  And I REALLY like Leah Remini, who is one of the hottest women alive and a terrific actress as well.  But then, this sitcom suffered simply because of that.  More than any other sitcom of the 90s and 2000s, this one really, really felt like a formula crammed into a box and spit out into mass production.

     I get that it’s politically correct to say that women are better than men.  That they are smarter and stronger and tougher and better looking and in every way superior.  It’s also very easy to get a laugh this way.  Oh, look at the poor stupid men!  Aren’t they adorably inept and generally terrible?  Ah, he’s going to try to fix the sink!  This will be so funny!  Well, to some people, I guess it is.  Lots of people, ’cause this show lasted nine seasons!

     But to me, it’s just implausible and sad.  This gorgeous, hot brilliant tough woman has inexplicably married a fat, sloppy, inept moron with very little discernible charm.  Imagine, just for a moment, that the situation were reversed.  Imagine watching a sitcom where, say, Brad Pitt was married to Susan Boyle.  And the whole show consisted of Susan Boyle wearing the same underwear for a week at a time, or forgetting Brad Pitt’s birthday because she stopped to eat a bucket of fudge.  How long do you think that would last?  Would it make it out of the boardroom at all?

     And so, with so many sitcoms of the 90s, we’re supposed to swallow this utterly inexplicable couple, and we’re supposed to laugh at the fact that Doug has to beg Carrie to be allowed to leave the house with the guys for a weekend.  Dude – you have no kids!  Why wouldn’t you be allowed to leave the house, unless she’s a heartless control freak harpie and you’re a spineless useless dishrag?  Oh – because it’s funnier that way.  I get it.

     The final season at last tried to do something about this obvious imbalance – it took this ludicrous relationship to its logical conclusion, as Carrie and Doug began contemplating divorce throughout Season Nine.  However, because the writers and creators of this show were as spineless and chicken and formulaic as Doug himself, they copped out with the big finale.  So sad.

Year:  2006
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Directors:  Robert Altman, Clint Eastwood, Martin Scorcese, Robert Benton, Tim Burton, James Cameron, Chris Columbus, Wes Craven, Cameron Crowe, Frank Darabont, Jonathan Demme, Nora Ephron, Richard Donner, William Friedkin, Ron Howard, Terry Gilliam, Lawrence Kasdan, Spike Lee, Barry Levinson, George Lucas, Steven Spielberg, David Lynch, Adrian Lyne, Garry Marshall, Penny Marshall, Sydney Pollack, Rob Reiner, Ridley Scott, Tony Scott, Brian Singer, Oliver Stone, Robert Zemeckis, David Zucker
Actors and Jerry Bruckheimer:  Kevin Bacon, Jennifer Beals, Leonardo DiCaprio, Jerry Bruckheimer, Tom Cruise, Ossie Davis, Robert Englund, Harrison Ford, Morgan Freeman, Scott Glenn, Jeff Goldblum, Elliott Gould, Tom Hanks, Dustin Hoffman, Dennis Hopper, Michael Keaton, Leslie Nielsen, Brad Pitt, Kevin Spacey, Roy Scheider, Wil Wheaton
Run time:  4 hours
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     On the second disc of Directors: Life Behind The Camera, Kevin Bacon is interviewed.  That means that THIS, more than A Few Good Men, more than Mystic River is THE movie to use to play “Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon”.  I’m not going to list all the participants here.  I have already done so above.  But just look at that list!  Is there an actor or director or wardrobe adviser in the entire world who hasn’t worked with one of those people?  I think the game now ought to be “two degrees of Kevin Bacon”, thanks entirely to this documentary.  That is, unless you play the game without including documentaries.  Or voices in animated movies.  Or some other crappy, obscure rule to make the game harder but less fun.  In which case, you are a party pooper.

     OK, on to the film itself, Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon aside.  If you’ve ever thought about making a film, if you’ve ever thought about acting or holding a camera or even knowing a little more about the movies you watch, this documentary is invaluable.  It’s a bit of an effort – there are many menus.  In each one you have the option of playing “all directors” or one at a time.  I recommend “all directors” – even the ones I don’t much care for (Tony Scott, Adrian Lyne) have something really interesting to say.  They talk about their starts in the business, the actors and how they get a certain performance out of a certain person, their favourite movies and the relationship between a director and a script.  And they all have a totally different take.

     The actors are interesting also – they appear on the second disc, talking about the styles of the various directors.  DiCaprio talks about James Cameron and Titanic, for example.  And they all have interesting anecdotes.  I won’t divulge them all here, because I think you should watch this.  But Jennifer Beals tells a funny story about a young boy who was a body double for her in Flashdance, and had to shave his legs for the part, much to his embarassment.  Kevin Spacey sheds some light on the scene in The Usual Suspects where everyone cracks up during the police lineup.  Dustin Hoffman explains some of the inspiration for the lines in Rain Man.  Brad Pitt talks Thelma & Louise, the list goes on and on.

     And what an incredible list it is.  There are other movies, documentaries, where directors talk about their craft.  Recently I reviewed a terrific documentary about documentary film makers called Capturing Reality.  A couple of the participants in that movie could have been great in this one as well, particularly Werner Herzog, who has done some terrific feature films as well as documentaries.  But I wouldn’t dream of bemoaning the fact that he is missing, or that the notoriously reclusive Terrence Malick is missing – they’ve got just about everyone else! 

     Another great film about film is called A Personal Journey With Martin Scorcese Through American Movies.  This is one of the DVDs that made me absolutely excited about movies, that made me go out and buy some of the great American classics like High Sierra and The Bridges At Toko-Ri.  That might be the most interesting and watchable of all documentaries about directors and film.  And Scorcese (along with the hilarious Garry Marshall and the reticent Clint Eastwood) is one of the most entertaining and fascinating directors interviewed in Directors: Life Behind The Camera.

     At the other end of the scale is a movie I once picked up called Directed By John Ford, where we get to see the iconic Western director at his crusty, close-mouthed best.  “Why were so many of your movies shot in Monument Valley?”  “What a stupid question.  Shmalawsssns.”  There’s not much of interest in that one – unless you want to watch Ford be cranky.  Which I kind of do.  And there ARE interviews with John Wayne, Henry Fonda and Jimmy Stewart, which are FAR more informative than those with Ford himself, most of which consist of only seven or eight words.

     Directors: Life Behind The Camera is somewhere in the middle.  It’s very good, and incredibly full of information.  But it isn’t the kind of DVD I can’t stop watching, like the Scorcese one.  In fact, it often encouraged me to stop watching, because another menu would pop up and I would have to navigate around again.  Then again, it gets the best information and the best stories out of the very best the movie industry has to offer.  And that in itself makes Directors a DVD that is totally worthwhile.  There’s four hours of stuff here – think of it as a project in loving movies, one that you can absorb over the course of a few weeks, or a lifetime. 

   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.

Years:  2005, 2006
Genre:  TV series, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Stephen Collins, Catherine Hicks, Jessica Biel (guest appearance), Beverley Mitchell, Haylie Duff, Sarah Thompson, George Stults
Creator:  Brenda Hampton
Run time:  15 hours 43 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     There’s a really obnoxious reliance on milk and cookies as a plot point over the course of Season 10 of Seventh Heaven,which gets more and more insipid with every successive season.  Season 10 comes out March 23rd from Paramount Home Entertainment, and in it, everyone in the Camden household and extended family eats cookies and drinks milk.  Often.  They even discuss eating their cookies and drinking their milk with each other.  It feels like home, you see, when you are sitting down with milk and cookies.  Lots can be accomplished when discussions are accompanied by milk and cookies.  Milk.  Cookies.

     You see, most of the Camdens are dunkers.  Except for those two irritating children, who have yet to learn.  Then there’s Lucy, who dunks in front of her family, just to fit in, but twists and scrapes and then dunks with her husband.  It’s their special thing.  Normally, I would expect a husband and wife to have something sexual as their “special thing”.  But no one in the Seventh Heaven universe has sex.  They have milk and cookies.  And babies are magically conjured out of hugs and hand holding.

     This show wants badly to be a soap opera.  Lies!  Betrayal!  Secrets!  But…the big lies are so lame as to be laughable.  Like, someone secretly elopes and gets real-married before their big wedding ceremony.  The horror!  Or, someone else loses a wedding ring.  My stars!  One young couple is having money troubles.  And so he drops out of school to work more hours to pay for the wedding ring and oh my heavens what will the rest of the family do?  Other than…not caring…which would be a more reasonable reaction.

     Melrose Place this is not.  It isn’t even 90210, which was similar only they had burgers and cokes instead of milk and cookies.  But Seventh Heaven is too tame for carbonated soft drink beverages and trans-fat laden grub.  Rather, they live in Camden-world, which is kind of like The Truman Show in its simplicity and inoffensiveness.  I expect that at the end of the final season we’ll see the Camdens discovering that in fact they live in a giant bubble and are being televised without their knowledge.  Until then, we will get more milk and more cookies and more bland nothingness.  And seasons like this one, which may as well be one really, really long, fifteen-hour Oreo commercial.

Year:  2009
Genre:  Kids, Animation
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring (voices):  Seth Rogen, Kiefer Sutherland, Hugh Laurie, Will Arnett
Run time:  13 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

Year:  2006
Genre:  Kids, Animation
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring (voices):  Mike Myers, Cameron Diaz, John Lithgow, Eddie Murphy
Director:  Simon J. Smith
Run time:  16 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     B.O.B.’s Big Break is pretty funny and pretty good.  All 13 minutes of it.  Shrek 3-D is pretty irritating for 16 minutes.  And now both come packaged together in a DVD release from Paramount Home Entertainment on March 23rd, for some reason.  This DVD set is a vertiable orgy of excess packaging.  The two films combine for a total of 29 minutes of average entertainment, and each one gets its own individual DVD case.  So it will take up a big chunk of your shelf space.

     Both DVDs come with four sets of those cardboard 3-D glasses that look so silly on your face.  Which means that in this package, you get two DVDs and eight sets of annoying glasses.  Which I guess would be great if you were throwing a birthday party for your six-year-old and had seven friends over.  That, and the kids would be entertained for almost a half hour.  Then I guess you could play pin-the-tail-on-the-donkey for the next four hours.  Or something.  That is, unless you already have Monsters Vs. Aliens, which comes with B.O.B.’s Big Break, or Shrek 3-D as a special feature somewhere else.

     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.

“But…I’m her father.”

Year:  2006
Genre:  Drama
Countries:  France, China
Language:  Mandarin w/ English subtitles
Starring:  Tian Yuan, Wu Youcai, Li Li, Li Yiqing, Huang He, Wang Guoqiang
Director:  Wang Chao
Run time:  88 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     Luxury Car is the latest film in the Global Film Initiative series released by First Run Features.  The series has been wonderful, with some gems that would otherwise not have been seen receiving a wide release.  Some are bizarre and I don’t get them (Opera Jawa from Indonesia, for example).  Others are classic.  Luxury Car is not quite a classic, but it is very very good and I’m glad people will be able to see this film.  Released in 2006, the movie stars Chinese pop star Tian Yuan as a prostitute.  Her father (Yu Woucai) comes to town, hoping to find her brother so he can see his mom one last time before she dies.  Yuan’s boss, a mombster who has recently impregnated her, poses as her boyfriend in order to make her small-town father feel at ease in the big city, and they try to hide her profession from him.

     Yuan is magnificent starring in this movie.  She’s certainly sexy, and she has a smouldering persona that works very well in her scenes with the men who lust after her.  At the same time she is able to convey her terror at letting her dad find out what it is she does.  She dotes on him, helps him search for her missing brother, and tries to guide him through the big city.  Although many of the characters in the film treat her father as a country bumpkin, and they humour him and condescend to him and treat him with kid gloves, he is no dummy.  The fact that her father is much sharper than people seem to think adds another dimension to the film.

     The central theme in the film is that Yuan’s mobster boss, who is posing as her boyfriend for her father, may be implicated in her brother’s disappearance.  Pieces of the mystery become clear as the movie moves along, thanks in part to a police investigator (Li Yiqing) who is also helping Woucai find his missing son.  What really works in the movie is that the finale is not heartbreaking, but rather a tender and revelatory scene between a young girl and her father.  It’s sad, but it’s not maudlin.  This film is terrific.

Year:  2006
Genre:  War, Epic, Period Piece
Countries:  South Korea, Hong Kong, China, Japan
Language:  Mandarin w/ English subtitles, or English dubbing
Starring:  Andy Lau, Ahn Sungki, Wang Zhi Wen, Fan Bing Bing, Wu Chi Lung, Choi Siwon
Director:  Jacob C.L. Cheung
Run time:  133 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films
DVD extras:  Feature commentary by Bey Logan (Hong Kong cinema expert), and the making of Battle of the Warriors.

     Even a halfway decent Hong Kong war epic is a pretty darn good movie.  And Battle Of The Warriors is a pretty darn good movie.  Even though it’s only halfway decent by Hong Kong war epic standards.  Andy Lau stars as a wandering warrior from the legendary clan of Mozi warriors who helps a city defend itself against an invading army with vastly superior numbers.  The movie is more about strategy than it is about bloodshed and swordplay.  More people are killed with arrows than are killed in crazy action scenes, but there is enough great wartime action to satisfy those seeking that kind of thrill.  Lau is fantastic, and he brings a serene, stoic screen presence to a role that requires little more than serenity and stoicness.  Stoicity.  Whatever that word might be.

     Ge Li (Lau) arrives in Liang City as the village prepares to surrender to the invading Zhao army.  The Zhaos have a massive army, hundreds of thousands strong, and the village has only a few thousand inhabitants to fight them off.  When Ge Li arrives, he makes a quick calculation.  Liang City is of little strategic importance to the Zhaos, and they are on their way to conquer the Yan State.  So all the people of Liang have to do is hold them off for a little while, and make it clear that conquering their small village will come at too great a cost, and the Zhaos will move on and leave them alone.  So with Ge Li’s help, they fortify their town and prepare for the onslaught.

     The movie is called Battle of the Warriors for the American release, but its international title is more apt - the movie is really called Battle of Wits, and that’s what it is.  Ge Li’s strategic planning vs. the military might and cunning of the Zhao commander.  This part of the movie is far more cerebral and meticulous than it is action-packed and bloody.  The bloodshed certainly arrives, but only after carefully orchestrated plans set it up.  This part of the movie is very cool, and I found it riveting, exemplified by the scene where Ge Li sits down with the enemy commander to play a board game, as they feel out each others’ strategic tendencies.

     Complicating things are the supporting characters, not all of whom make sense.  The king of Liang City is an ineffectual, drunken buffoon, who cares more about staying in power than he does about helping his people.  He’s not an unusual character in a war movie.  The bumbling, clueless, mean-spirited commander is a pretty standard guy.  But Lord Liang (Wang Zhiwen) is more of a cartoon character than anything else.  Then there’s his general.  He seems to be a cold-blooded opportunist, and he plots to destroy Ge Li when it appears he has become the most powerful and beloved man in the village.  He orders the massacre of some captured soldiers, showing his and his evil tendencies.  Then, at other points in the film, he appears to be sticking up for Ge Li when the king wants him destroyed.  I’m not sure what he’s supposed to be.

     The two most interesting characters in the film are the gorgeous Yi Yue (Fan Bingbing), the leader of Liang’s cavalry, who falls in love with Ge Li, and the prince of Liang.  The prince is a complex character, who evolves throughout the film.  Initially skeptical of the stranger, and resentful that some of his authority has been usurped, he eventually comes around to seeing things Ge Li’s way.  Then, in a surprise ending, something…happens…I don’t want to ruin the ending.  I hope you’ll watch this movie.  It isn’t perfect, and it loses a lot of steam after the big betrayal toward the end, but it’s overall a solid effort.  And as I said, a solid Hong Kong war epic effort is a pretty darn good movie.

“You got to mind your Shirleys!”
“Oh no!  I’m all up in your Shirleys!” 

Years:  2006, 2007
Genre:  TV series, garbage, comedy, sitcom
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Keesha Sharp, Khalil Khan, Golden Brooks, Persia White, Reggie Hayes, Tracee Ellis Ross, Richard T. Jones
Creators:  Mara Brock Akil, Kelsey Grammer
Run time:  7 hours 40 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  The Game, Season One, Girlfriends Fifth Season, Girlfriends Fourth Season

     I still hate Girlfriends.  I took a break from Season Six, and then thought – this IS a long running sitcom!  Maybe I should give it another chance.  Someone must like it.  Maybe I can figure this out.  But I can’t.  This is still a jokeless sitcom with an inexplicable laugh track, it still stars unpleasant characters who are, for the most part, unlikeable.  And it still misses as a drama, a comedy, a romance, and a TV series.  Monica is now a bigger character in the series, and is friends with Jo, but she is even more unlikeable than Mya and Darnell and William and Toni and Jo and the rest of them.  Why add another character who is even worse than the already bad ones?

     Toni (Jill Marie Jones) has left the show for Season Seven.  That’s not such a bad thing, because she was unlikeable as well.  However, in the first several episodes of this season, the other girls are making constant references to her.  Where’s Toni?  Why did Toni leave?  How much time has passed since Jo went to New Orleans to build homes for Habitat For Humanity that allowed all this stuff to happen including Toni leaving?  Jo spends the entire first episode going back to L.A. to re-connect with her best friend Toni, only to find out that she has left and they will likely never speak again.  Why bother?

     The writers on this program had to realize that this would make little sense.  On one level, I think it’s great that they didn’t just ignore the departure of a major cast member like so many sitcoms do.  And I like the fact that they didn’t come up with one of those easy-way-out explanations like she got hit by a bus and died.  But their constant references to her make it really obvious that they are really, really hoping that Jill Marie Jones returns to the show at some point.  Until then, it’s like they’re spinning their wheels a little.

     So what we get is a bunch of gold-diggers and leeches, loud and obnoxious women and cuckolded men, and not a lot of laughs.  And the one person who has been most reasonable, Jo, has apparently spent the last season being so awful herself that she has driven her best friend away forever.  So what reason is left to watch this show?  Not much, I think.

“She’s my mother.”

Year:  2006
Country:  Australia
Language:  English
Starring:  Richard Roxburgh, Essie Davis, Alice McConnell, Emily Barclay
Director:  Cate Shortland
Run time:  104 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Australian director Cate Shortland does some impressive things in The Silence, out September 22nd from Alliance Films.  She gets solid performances out of her actors, she maintains a tense atmosphere throughout, and she has some stylistic flourishes which are pretty cool.  This means that The Silence is a very well made movie.  It does not mean that it is a good one.  Because it’s not.  The biggest problem is the script, which is all over the place and has some major holes.

     There are two big problems with the movie.  First, there is a reliance on coincidence that really strains credulilty.  Richard (Richard Roxburgh) is a cop who has been involved in a frightening incident where an informant was murdered.  He has been re-assigned, for some reason, to a police museum where he is now in charge of preparing photos for a display on true crime.  He notices the same woman appearing in several of the photos.  And he decides to investigate.  We eventually figure out (although it’s never pointed out) that her appearance in these photos is nothing but an enormous coincidence.  So is her identity, and the mystery that ensues.

     The second big problem is the ending.  For a movie that has been so taut, and tense, and suspenseful, the ending is sadly obvious.  And it wraps the entire plot up into a neat little package, where everyone bad gets what’s coming to them, and everyone good lives happily ever after, and all the questions are answered easily, and Richard doesn’t have to make a difficult decision between his girlfriend and the woman he’s now all about.  The movie has been gritty and challenging up until this point.  But it lets us off way too easily.