Year:  2007
Genre:  Documentary, TV series, History 
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Voices:  Tom Hanks, Samuel L. Jackson, Oliver Platt, Adam Arkin,  Josh Lucas, Keith David
Director:  Ken Burns
Run time:  14 hours
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     At the outset of The War, Ken Burns says that the story of America’s involvement in the second world war is way too big to tell in one documentary.  That kind of gave me pause.  This is Ken Burns talking here.  The same Ken Burns who went into staggering detail telling the entire story of the civil war over the course of more than ten hours.  Who spent more than eighteen hours poring over the minutiae of baseball in one of the greatest documentaries ever filmed.  And with fourteen hours of documentary filming, he can’t tell the entire story of America’s four-year involvement in the second world war?  C’mon Ken Burns, I expect better of you!

     Now, that being said, he IS probably right.  And there IS an awful lot of information crammed into The War.  America was fighting on MANY fronts in the second world war, against the Germans in Europe and Africa, and against the Japanese all over the Pacific.  Burns focuses on four small American towns in the film, following the soldiers who left from those towns to serve their countries in various battlefields.   It’s a fascinating look at life in America during war time, and it’s something I haven’t seen before in a World War II documentary.  After all, we know that the Americans got into the war with Pearl Harbour, and that they ended the war with the atomic bomb in Nagasaki, but it’s what happened in between that’s absolutely fascinating.  And there’s no one better to tell that story than Ken Burns.  The War is available on Blu-Ray May 15^th.  And like I have said about every other monumental documentary Ken Burns has ever done, go pick it up!

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:  2008, 2009, 2010, 2007
Genre:  Short film, Gay 
Countries:  United States, Sweden
Language:  English
Run time:  104 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     First Run Features is releasing Best Gay Shorts and Best Lesbian Shorts on DVD May 17th.  I think there should be more DVDs like this, that gather up the best short films and present them so film buffs can check them out.  Here are the movies on the Best Lesbian Shorts disc:

   25 Random Things I Did During My Big Fat Lesbian Depression (****4/10)

Starring:  Chris Russo
Director:  Chris Russo
Run time:  11 minutes

     Long, self-indulgent…just like the title!  Chris Russo basically does a one-woman show that just isn’t terribly funny.  Or gripping.  Or…anything, really.  Poor way to start the set.

     At The End Of The Street (*******7/10)

Director:  Jennifer Malmqvist
Run time:  14 minutes  

     After a breakup, a confrontation between estranged lovers lead to a fight over a table.  Which is really, it seems, just an excuse to show up at the ex-girlfriend’s house.  Then an encounter with a man that also deals with the table is eye-opening.  Polish, with English subtitles.

  Birthday (*********9/10) 

Starring:  Asa Karlin, Lotten Roos, August Lindmark
Director:  Jennifer Malmqvist
Run time:   18 minutes

     The best film on the disc.  Swedish with English subtitles.  A lesbian couple comes apart at the seams on Katrina’s 40th birthday, as she reveals to her partner Sara that she is pregnant with the baby of a mutual friend.  Their daughter becomes involved, and a canoe.  Poignant and heartfelt. 

  Parental Guidance (******6/10) 

Starring:  Rachel Nicole Hamilton, Ryan Ochoa
Director:  Meredith Scott Lynn
Run time:  4 minutes  

     Two little kids have grown-up words stuffed in their mouths as they discuss their parents’ marital woes.  The little girl has two moms, the little boy has two dads, and they are all on a camping weekend.  The parents are fighting, the kids are precocious, and it all ends very quickly. 

  Public Relations (********8/10)

Starring:  Summer Bishil, Sienna Farall, Jessica Tuck, Wendi McLendon-Covey
Director:  Gianna Sobol
Run time:   17 minutes

     A wonderful little movie starring two beautiful young women.  Both women work as assistants to horrible women (cleaning their houses, booking their appointments, getting birthday gifts for their rotten spoiled children), and have talked only over the phone from LA and New York.  Now their bosses are moving to the same city, and the girls can finally meet and fall in love.

    Swimming (*****5/10)

Starring:  Dominique Dibbell, Jamie Tolbert
Director:  P. David Ebersole
Run time:  7 minutes  

      Meh.  A lifeguard obsesses over a woman taking swimming lessons in the pool where she works.  Dreams and fantasies and so forth.  But no one in the movie compels me to more than a passing interest – and at 7 minutes, a film shouldn’t feel “long”.

   Tech Support (*******7/10)

Starring:  Carrie Barrett, Marla Caceres
Director:  Erik Gernand
Run time:  9 minutes  

     A sweet short about two women who connect over the phone when one of them calls for tech support and the other one answers.  Some pretty weak “acting” in this one, considering it’s all dialogue, but it works and has a sweet ending.  Nice.  Included above in this review.

  Tools 4 Fools (***3/10)

Starring:  Julie Goldman
Director:  Kate A. Brandt
Run time:  8 minutes  

     Even at 8 minutes, this self-indulgent, not-funny dildo infomercial is way too long.

  You Move Me (******6/10)

Starring:  Drae Campbell, Rebecca Drysdale, Lena Bouton
Director:  Gina Hirsch
Run time:  13 minutes

     A woman helps her friend move out of her old house after she breaks up with her girlfriend.  Apparently they need a massive U-Haul truck for one little trunk full of stuff…and there is some really odd (and possibly offensive) native American role-playing lesbian stuff going on.  But it works!

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.

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.

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

  The Big One (*******7/10)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

  Fahrenheit 9/11 (**********10/10)

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

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

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

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

  Sicko (*********9/10)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Year:  2007
Genre:  Horror
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Richard Tyson, Kimberly J. Brown, Sarah Aldrich, Christopher Shyer, Trevor Duke, David Naughton
Cameo:  Clint Howard
Eye candy:  Aldrich, Brown, Robin Sydney (brief boobs), Sarah Smith (brief boobs), Jennifer Roa, Shannon Malone (much boob)
Director:  Lance W. Dreesen
Run time:  96 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     There are a few things worth mentioning, off the top, about Big Bad Wolf.  First, David Naughton makes a few brief appearances as the sheriff.  Naughton became famous for American Werewolf in London in 1981.  Obviously, he didn’t parlay that success into a long and successful career, since he is now reduced to cameos in awful, awful werewolf movies.  Also, Richard Tyson appears as the bad guy.  You may remember Tyson as the bad guy in Kindergarten Cop in 1990.  Obviously, he didn’t parlay that success into…well, you know the rest.  Oh, and Clint Howard has a two-minute cameo as well.

     So…there’s the positive stuff.  I could also suggest that the occasional boob is positive as well, but that’s just not the case.  See, this werewolf is chewing up all these people, and occasionally rips their clothes off first.  But he also rapes them.  This is supposed to be funny, as the werewolf cracks wise while…raping people.  It’s also supposed to be titillating, with the exposed boob and all.  But it isn’t funny, because the werewolf says nothing funny.  He just says “she’s not a virgin any more…hahahaha” and…we’re supposed to laugh because the werewolf’s talking?  While raping?  Why is that funny?  So with nothing funny in the scene, it’s just a rape.  Which makes it less than titillating as well.

     The werewolf is a mean, mean guy – he rapes and claws and eats people and generally does anything he can to be as gross as possible.  Like spilling guts and tearing off heads and so forth.  But as a person, he might be even worse.  Mitch is the ultimate Evil Stepfather, a wife-abusing, child-endangering whackjob who is willing to rape his stepson’s girlfriend – and this is when he’s in human form!  Wouldn’t it be more interesting if he were a nice guy as a person?  Then when it came time to kill him, it might be a moral dilemma of sorts. 

     As it is, it’s just a guy being awful.  For an entire movie.  An exploitative, gory-for-the-sake-of-gore, unpleasantly violent against women, unfunny attempt at comedy, virtually unwatchable movie.  Which comes out October 5th, along with four similarly tasteless, idiotic horror movies, from Alliance Films.

Year:  2007, 2008
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Dannah Phirman, Chris Parnell, Patton Oswalt, Fred Stoller, Jack D. Ferraiolo, Cree Summer, Pamela Adlon, Ned Bellamy, James Adomian, Jeffrey Tambor, John C. McGinley, Peter Graves
Creator:  Dorothea Gillim
Run time:  100 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I really like Word Girl.  This is the best PBS kids show I’ve seen yet (although that’s faint praise – what I’m really saying is that at least this one isn’t Martha Speaks or Dinosaur Train).  What I like most about the show is that it doesn’t talk down to kids.  Although every now and then they’ll focus on a particular vocabulary word, like articulate, Word Girl usually talks eloquently and properly without preaching.  The show is also remarkably self-aware, for a kids show.  When something ludicrous happens (and it’s a show about superheroes, so the ludicrous is the everyday), Word Girl has no problem calling attention to the leaps in logic created by its own plot.

     Word Girl does battle with a series of super-villains (who, really, are not terribly “super” – they’re just particularly villainous).  She has a monkey sidekick who doesn’t do much, but does have the fantastic superhero sidekick nickname Captain Huggy Face.  Much better than Robin don’t you think?  In Tricks And Treats, out August 24th from Paramount Home Entertainment, Word Girl and Captain Huggy Face do battle with Birthday Girl, The Butcher, Tobey (hilariously voiced by Patton Oswalt), Chuck the Evil Sandwich Making Guy (Fred Stoller), and The Coach (Ned Bellamy).  All of it works, all of it makes me laugh, and I was willing to keep watching this DVD even after the kids went to bed.

     One complaint – the constant use of the phrase “worrrd up!” was irritating.  I get that Word Girl needs a catchphrase, and it must have to do with grammar or vocabulary.  And I understand that “iammmmbic pentameter!” might be a little bit cumbersome, or that “dannnnngling paaaarticiple!” might go over the heads of some of the kids in the intended audience.  But “worrrd up!” makes me feel like I’m watching a cheesy late-80s rap video.  Like in the next scene, DJ E-Z Rock is going to show up.  This show is bonkers enough, though, that an appearance by DJ E-Z Rock wouldn’t come as a big shock.  And that’s why it’s great.

Year:  2007, 2008
Genre:  Kids, Cartoon, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Dannah Phirman, Chris Parnell, Patton Oswalt, Fred Stoller, Jack D. Ferraiolo, Cree Summer, Pamela Adlon, Ned Bellamy, James Adomian, Jeffrey Tambor, John C. McGinley, Peter Graves
Creator:  Dorothea Gillim
Run time:  100 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I don’t like to complain about Word Girl, because I really like the show.  But for a show that’s all about vocabulary and the correct choice of the proper word for the appropriate situation, there are sure a lot of misnomers I can point out.  First of all, Word Girl herself.  Word Girl is a superhero with super-strength and the ability to fly.  And yet she has chosen her name based on her love of vocabulary words.  Spider-Man is called Spider-Man because he has the abilities of a spider.  The Flash is so named because he is extremely fast.  But imagine if The Incredible Hulk were actually called The Numismatist, because of David Banner’s love for coin collecting.  That’s the type of nomenclature we’re expected to swallow with Word Girl.

     Second, the title of this DVD is Earth Day Girl, out August 24th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  Which leads me to believe there will be an overarching environmental message tying the episodes together.  Or at least a single episode celebrating Earth Day and involving some environmental theme.  But this is not the case.  Instead, the disc kicks off with a single episode called “Earth Day Girl”, where the super-villain Birthday Girl throws a tantrum.  See, she thinks it’s her birthday, but really people are saying Earth Day.  How perplexing.  All Birthday Girl really wants is a piece of cake.

     And that’s the third problem I had with this disc.  The theme of the eight episodes is clearly food.  Birthday Girl wants cake.  The Butcher throws meat at everyone.  Granny May causes trouble in the grocery store.  Dr. Two-Brains is interested only in absconding with enormous amounts of cheese.  Chuck The Evil Sandwich-Making Guy is self-explanatory.  Mr. Big is named after a chocolate bar.  That’s the theme here – food!  Not Earth Day or the environment or anything else.

     OK.  Enough bashing Word Girl.  This remains a really smart, really funny TV show for kids that I like very much.  An example of the humour in this show, humour which might go over the head of some kids – on the back of the DVD, all the villains Word Girl encounters are listed, along with their episodes.  Like for example, “The Butcher” in Jerky Jerk, or “Granny May” in Coupon Madness.  Then, the last episode on the disc (and one of the best), stars “Lady Redundant Woman” in Lady Redundant Woman.  Get it?  Then get Word Girl.

Vicky Cristina Barcelona (******6/10)

Year:  2008
Genre:  Drama, Comedy
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Javier Bardem, Scarlett Johansson, Penelope Cruz, Rebecca Hall, Patricia Clarkson, Kevin Dunn, Chris Messina
Director:  Woody Allen
Run time:  96 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     There are a few reasons to watch Vicky Cristina Barcelona beyond the fact that Penelope Cruz is deservedly nominated for a Best Supporting Actress Oscar, or that she makes out with Scarlett Johanssen, or that Rebecca Hall adds even more hot to the picture.

     No, there are other reasons besides hot women and kinky three-ways and lesbian encounters. Although that seems to be all I can talk about at the moment. No, there is also the Woody Allen dialogue, which is smart and funny as Woody Allen tends to be – although not nearly as smart, funny and scathing as he once was. There is the wonderful setting of Barcelona, and there is also the terrific performance of Javier Bardem. Bardem has had trouble with roles like this, most notably in Love In The Time of Cholera.

     But once you have watched Vicky Cristina Barcelona, you will be sold on Bardem. In fact, if you’re anything like me, you will desperately want to BE him in this movie. All the more reason to watch it.  And I’m sure there’s another reason…nope.  It escapes me.

Lost In Translation (*********9/10)

Year:  2003
Genre:  Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Scarlett Johansson, Bill Murray, Anna Faris, Giovanni Ribisi, Fumihiro Hayashi
Director:  Sofia Coppola
Run time:  102 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Lost In Translation is notable because it is Bill Murray’s best serious role, ever.  Oh, he’s still funny – very funny.  But not in the Bill Murray way I’m used to seeing.  The film is also notable because it signalled the arrival of Scarlett Johansson as a major force in movies.  She had been great before (Ghost World, notably) but after this movie she was Hollywood’s sexiest young actress, a total fantasy girl, and also a recognized wonderful actress.  I must say I am mostly disappointed in the roles she has taken since 2003, mainly because most of them have been as the Temptress, or the Hot Bimbo, or the Woman Behind The Man.  Lost In Translation indicates she is capable of much, much more.

     The story is tender, and hilarious.  Bill Murray is a fading American actor in Japan to shoot a commercial for a brand of whiskey.  There are some truly hilarious scenes where he must deal with the overly-hospitable Japanese, including one where he tries to fight off the hooker they send to his room.  Alone in Japan, where he knows nobody and is basically stranded, he meets the very young Scarlett Johansson.  She is in the same hotel, also stranded and alone as her photographer husband (Giovanni Ribisi) is off on an assignment.  They strike up a friendship and become very close, even as Murray is picking out carpet swatches over the fax machine with his wife back home in America.

     Johansson’s performance is exquisite, as she finds just the right blend of sadness, loneliness, vulnerability and intelligence.  Murray is even better, as he lets down his guard, tries not to use humour to keep this young woman at arm’s length, and they both discover something profound about themselves.  And Sofia Coppola deserves praise as well, her direction is incredibly subtle, yet assured.  She made Japan feel as foreign to me as I watched as it did for the two protagonists.  Lost In Translation was an absolute triumph.

The Visitor (**********10/10)

Year:  2007
Genre:  Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Richard Jenkins, Hiam Abbass, Haaz Sleiman, Danai Gurira, Marian Seldes
Director:  Tom McCarthy
Run time:  103 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The Visitor is the best DVD in this set, out August 17th from Alliance Films. The Visitor is a magnificent film, starring Richard Jenkins as a lonely man whose wife has died. He comes home to his New York City apartment he hasn’t visited in almost a year. When he walks in, he finds an illegal immigrant couple living in his home. The man (Haaz Sleiman) is from Syria, his girlfriend (Danai Gurira) is from Senegal. Instead of giving them the boot, he allows them to stay until they can find a place of their own, and they quickly become friends, bonding through music.

     Now, many movies have been made about lonely old men who encounters some kind of free-spirited people and has a rebirth. And some of them (like Venus, in 2006) have been very good. Others have really sucked. The Visitor might well be the best of them all. The three lead actors are absolutely flawless, especially Jenkins. He is receiving a considerable amount of Oscar buzz (and a nomination) for this film, and deservedly so.  Although he should have won.  He is terrifically understated and amazingly realistic. Sleiman is wonderful as the Syrian immigrant Tarek, full of joy and vitality. Gurira plays Zainab, his girlfriend, with more restraint and caution, but with a tenderness and love for her boyfriend that leaps off the screen. I know, that sounds lame. But it isn’t. Nothing in this movie is lame. It is all amazing.

     Every scene rings true. Every action by every character is understated and vividly real. And before you know it, this movie has sucked you in completely. It’s a small film. A modest film. And an absolutely wonderful film. It’s pretty rare that a movie can be both life-affirming and heartbreaking at the same time, but The Visitor does both, and it does them well. This film provides masterful acting, joy, romance, and a powerful message, all wrapped up in one of the best movies of the year. Do yourself a big favour, and pick this one up, whether you buy this box set or not.

Year:  2007
Genre:  Action, War, Drama
Countries:  Hong Kong, China
Language:  Mandarin w/ English subtitles, or English dubbing
Starring:  Jet Li, Andy Lau, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Xu Jinglei
Director:  John Woo
Run time:  113 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The Warlords is an in-depth examination of human nature.  It features basically good men doing bad things, and basically bad men doing good things.  It is a movie that looks at the bonds of brotherhood, whether that bond be by birth or by blood or by blood oath.  It is a sweeping political and feudal epic set in Hong Kong in the late 1800s that delves deep into the political scene at the time, between Empresses, governors, military generals and faceless men behind the scenes.  And it’s also a movie where a guy gets his torso blown graphically into tiny pieces thanks to a close-up encounter with a cannon.

     The Warlords is all those things, and more.  And less.  It is so ambitious, and done on such a large scale, that it can’t possibly score on every front.  The love-triangle, deception story, can’t possibly be fully fleshed out, so to speak, because that would mean there would be less time for limb-hacking and face-stabbing and all that Braveheart battle type stuff.  The behind-the-scenes political manouevering must necessarily be touched on only briefly, because there just isn’t time to go fully into it.  So the corruption and the backstabbing and the callousness of these people is treated as a de facto problem in life.  Like, of course they are evil.

     What really works, however, is the idea of the ends justifying the means.  In a movie about love, war, politics, history and loyalty, only the loyalty and the war get really in-depth treatment.  Even when the movie ends, we do not know if the ends for certain characters really justified their means.  As in another Jet Li classic, Hero, we are left with a sense of sadness at the end of the movie (for different reasons – I’m not about to give away the ending to this one).  We wonder whether the world is actually better off, and whether the characters we have come to know are better off.

     But that’s another small problem with the film.  We have indeed come to know the four central characters – three men who have taken a blood oath to be loyal to each other to the death, and the woman who throws a bit of a wrench into that whole plan.  But we haven’t come to know them enough to necessarily like them.  When they do good things, and make noble speeches, we think oh, OK.  They’re doing a good thing.  And when they do bad things and kill the wrong people, we think oh, OK.  They’re doing something with which I don’t particularly agree.  And we move on.  If any of these characters were to die, I wouldn’t be terribly upset about it.  They are not so sympathetic that I identify with any of them.

     So, in some ways, The Warlords plays a little like a documentary.  Of course it isn’t even a biopic or anything like that, but it moves in a workmanlike manner from one plot development to the next.  Here is Jet Li getting to know the girl.  Now he meets the bandits.  He becomes blood brothers with them.  He convinces them to join the army.  They win a great victory and their families get fed.  Now the politicians are playing sneaky games.  Here comes another battle.  And that’s all we really get.  Which is fine, because I was totally blown away by the sweeping camera work, the massive battle scenes and the terrific lead actors (especially Li and Andy Lau, one of my favourite Hong Kong actors).

     In the end, the message is fairly ambiguous, and that’s the way it should be.  It makes you really think, and the final scenes (including one that is reminiscent of one of the coolest scenes in Cool Hand Luke) manage to conjure up some power that is surprising given the clinical nature of much of the rest of the movie.  And by then, we have begun to really feel for one of the characters, who appears to slowly lose his mind as the movie goes on.  The Warlords really is very good, and it should be watched, by fans of great sword-fighting action war historical political movies.  Like a Chinese Braveheart.  Only shorter.  And not quite as good.  The only real problem with The Warlords is that it bit off more than it could chew.

     This is a movie that could have benefited by a gutsy move to add an hour to its running time.  I found it compelling enough that I would gladly have watched another hour, and John Woo recently proved with Red Cliff that Hong Kong war epics need not fit under the two-hour running time cutoff.  THAT movie held me enthralled for all five hours.  Which is saying something.  This one is equally ambitious, but its two hour run time cuts it off at the knees.  It’s still a solid two hours, but it could have been much more.  The Warlords comes to DVD July 27th from Alliance Films.

Year:  2007
Genre:  Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kristen Stewart, Aaron Stanford, Bruce Dern, Elizabeth Ashley, Jayce Bartok, Melissa Leo, Andrea Martin, Jesse L. Martin
Director:  Mary Stuart Masterson
Run time:  85 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     I recently read a terrific dissertation on Kristen Stewart and her role in the Twilight movies.  Unfortunately, I can no longer find the article on the internet, but to sum up: Kristen Stewart was chosen for the role of the star in Twilight precisely because she has no distinguishing characteristics that make her memorable.  She is mostly expressionless and emotionless and unremarkable.  Which allows all the little girls who watch the Twilight movies to superimpose their own faces on hers, subconsciously, and watch the films as though they are the Kristen Stewart character.  The idea is that it was by design that the producers chose the most featureless, unremarkable girl they could to star in the series.

     I have never seen a Twilight movie.  So I don’t know how accurate this assessment really is.  But it seems like a pretty solid argument.  After all, I know all about Team Jacob and Team Edward and all that.  But I don’t see any Team whatever-Kristen-Stewart’s-character’s-name-is.  I don’t even know what her character’s name is.  Because the Twilight movies don’t really seem to be about her.  The more I thought of it though, the more it made sense.  I thought of the other Kristen Stewart movies I have seen.  Into The Wild, Jumper, The Messengers, Adventureland and so forth.  I tried very hard to remember what character she played in those movies.  For the most part, I was successful.  But I was struck by how unremarkable she has been in most of those films.

     Having now seen The Cake Eaters, I think I understand a little more.  In Into The Wild, she was supposed to be unremarkable.  Pretty girl, to be sure, and even quite sexy in her scene, but in that particular situation, she could have been any girl in a trailer park.  And she was.  In Jumper and The Messengers, she was unremarkable because the movies were unremarkable.  The Cake Eaters is the first time I have seen her really shine.  There are like fifty characters in the film.  So putting her alone on the cover of the DVD box is clearly an attempt to cash in on her recent big-time celebrity.  Thanks to Twilight, of course.  But in this case, this blatant pandering is actually justified.  Stewart is the best thing about this The Cake Eaters.

     In the film, she plays a girl with a condition called Ataxia, which inhibits her muscular control.  This means she spends the movie walking and moving awkwardly, and talking as though she had a stroke.  This isn’t what makes her performance terrific though.  Lots of actors have played handicapped people before, and just mimicking the symptoms doesn’t make you fantastic.  In Stewart’s case, it’s the fact that she is able to balance a couple of different traits.  One is a shy awkwardness that she has developed as a result of her condition.  When she becomes interested in a boy, she is a little afraid that she won’t be good enough for him. 

     At the same time, though, Georgia (Stewart) has an aggressiveness that comes from the fact that she will die very young.  Knowing that her time could be up tomorrow means that she really has nothing to lose when going after this boy.  The two feelings coexist in her throughout the movie, but they are not different personalities.  They are constantly there within the same person, and that person is fascinating.

     There are a dozen other story lines in The Cake Eaters also.  Beagle, the boy with whom Georgia is infatuated, is a little slow himself.  His brother has just returned from the big city following the death of their mother, and he is trying to reconnect with an old girlfriend who has now moved on.  Beagle’s father (Bruce Dern) is trying to re-connect with an old flame of his, who happens to be Georgia’s grandmother.  All this in the wake of his wife’s death.  It’s all very complicated, and at times it’s too much happening at once.  The love story between Beagle and Georgia is sweet, but his brother’s story is obvious and can be tiresome.  And Dern’s story is just too much.

     The Cake Eaters is the directorial debut of Mary Stuart Masterson, and she is clearly a talented director.  Even with the three intertwining love stories, it runs a tight, well-paced 85 minutes.  But I would have liked to see at least one of the three stories dropped.  I would have liked to see more of the budding romance between Georgia and Beagle.  I would also have been interested in learning a little more about Bruce Dern and his situation.  Which leaves the story of the prodigal son as the one I could do without.  It clutters up what would otherwise be a very sweet and moving romantic tragedy. 

     The Cake Eaters is still very good, if not perfect.  And it proves, I think, that Kristen Stewart’s facelessness in other movies has been more by design than anything.  In this film, she has a face and a heart and a distinct personality, all of which make me want to see more of her.  And I will remember her in this movie.  Which comes to DVD July 6th from Alliance Films.

Year:  2007
Genre:  Comedy, Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Doug Benson
Guest appearances:  Sarah Silverman, Zach Galifianakis, Patton Oswalt, Jeffrey Ross, Dave Navarro, Marc Emery
Director:  Michael Blieden
Run time:  90 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Super High Me is the kind of movie I would expect, in that it appears to have been made by a total stoner.  And of course it was.  Out July 6th from Alliance Films, this is the story of Doug Benson, a “pot comedian”, who decides to smoke weed, nonstop, every day for a month.  And then he documents the results.  Obviously a story inspired by Morgan Spurlock’s Super Size Me, where he ate McDonalds for a month every day to see if he would die.

     The biggest difference in the two movies is that Spurlock’s movie ended.  Yes, he did in fact almost die.  And it became abundantly clear that eating nothing but McDonalds day in and day out was no way to live.  So what are the effects of smoking marijuana that much?  Well…I’m not totally sure.  Benson appears to suffer no specific health-related ill effects, but he does also seem to be getting an awful lot stupider.  But we never really see the measurements or the final results of his experiment.  It seems like halfway through, the movie just…forgot what it was about.  Figures.

     The first half is reasonably coherent, as Benson talks to a bunch of pot activists including Canada’s own Marc Emery.  (Well, he’s now of course America’s Marc Emery, as our friendly federal government actually extradited Emery to the States recently to stand trial on charges of selling seeds or some stupid thing.)  A few people start talking about legalization, about activism, and about the protests they have planned in support of the legalization of marijuana.  But again, this movie has a short attention span and very few of these conversations are anything more than superficial.

     The thing is, Super High Me kinda works.  Benson’s a pretty funny guy, and while most of the movie plays like an ad for his stand-up routine, that’s OK because his stand-up is decent.  But the rest of the movie is what I would expect from a bunch of stoners.  Unfocused with no clear goal in sight.  What does smoking marijuana for 30 days do to a person?  Likely, it makes them eat a hell of a lot more McDonalds.  And thankfully, there’s a movie out there that tells us precisely what effect that has.

Year:  2007
Genre:  Drama, Thriller
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Josh Brolin, Tommy Lee Jones, Javier Bardem, Woody Harrelson, Kelly MacDonald, Garret Dillahunt, Stephen Root
Director:  Joel Coen, Ethan Coen, Coen Brothers
Run time:  122 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     The Coen Brothers had collaborated on twelve films in their illustrious career before No Country For Old Men.  There had been some interesting misses, like The Ladykillers, and some terrific movies like The Big Lebowski.  And there have been three absolute classics.  They are Miller’s Crossing, Fargo, and now No Country For Old Men.  This is an absolutely brilliant film, taken very literally from Cormac McCarthy’s absolutely brilliant novel.  This may well be the best movie the Coens have done, and that’s saying a lot – Fargo was the best film of the 1990s

     Tommy Lee Jones plays sheriff Ed Tom Bell, at the centre of the film, who is long on wisdom but short on solutions.  Javier Bardem gives one of the creepiest performances in recent memory as a maniacal killer named Anton Chigurh.  His performance in this movie is as scary as any turned in by the other masters of the creepy of this generation – the Christopher Walkens and John Malkoviches of the world.  Josh Brolin is Llewellyn Moss, the “main character” in the movie.  You know, if one could consider any character in this movie a “main” one.  He’s just a man who stumbles across the aftermath of a bloody shootout in the desert.  He finds massive amounts of heroin, which he leaves there, dozens of guns, some of which he takes, and two million dollars.  He takes all of that. 

     This is what sets off the chain of events that are the plot of the movie.  But this film is not really about any of those characters.  This movie is about No Country For Old Men.  That is, it is about the country.  The end of the country and world that we all know, and the presentation to us of a world that is completely alien to us.  You could call the film a western, in that it takes place in the west.  You could call it a thriller, a black comedy, or even a horror movie.  But it can’t be pigeonholed into a genre.

     No Country For Old Men is bleak, entertaining, and virtually flawless.  Cormac McCarthy wrote a tremendous novel, which was translated into a brilliant screenplay, which was then transformed into an absolute genius movie.  To say something is as good as Fargo is something I might have considered ridiculous five years ago.  No Country For Old Men is as good as Fargo.  And therefore it is better than any other movie of the past ten years.  Rent it, buy it, whatever.  Just do it now.

Year:  2007
Genre:  Drama, Thriller
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Casey Affleck, Michelle Monaghan, Amy Ryan, Morgan Freeman, Ed Harris, John Ashton, Titus Welliver
Director:  Ben Affleck
Run time:  115 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     Until now, I was convinced that Ben Affleck wouldn’t know a good script if it walked up to him and kicked him in the stones. Now, I am not so sure. Either he just doesn’t care, as long as he’s acting, or he is such a bad actor that he will ruin any script by himself. But there is a third option. Perhaps the script to Gone Baby Gone not only walked up to him and kicked him in the stones, it also bit him in the face, chewed off part of his nose, ripped out his nipple ring, stabbed him twice and then gave him the people’s elbow.

     Or maybe it’s a combination, because Ben Affleck’s wisest decision as a director in Gone Baby Gone was not to cast Ben Affleck in any role in his movie. How many directors can competently direct themselves? Clint Eastwood and…yeah. Maybe just Clint. So that was good decision number one. A questionable decision was to cast his younger brother Casey in the starring role. Casey Affleck, as far as I was aware, existed only in movies that starred Ben, and even then he played some minor throw-away role. How good could he actually be?

     Well, the answer, it turns out, is VERY good. Casey Affleck plays a private investigator who looks as though he is thirteen. This is great casting, because Casey Affleck does indeed look as though he is thirteen. And when the situation calls for him to act the tough guy, it somehow really works. Not only do we not expect it, neither do the bad guys. And it’s pretty convincing intimidation when this young, babyfaced guy all of a sudden gets Dirty Harry tough. Everyone is taken aback, realistically so. It’s a great job by Affleck of handling the character.

     Somehow, with that Good Will Hunting Boston accent, you get the sense that this guy is a lot tougher than he looks. His wife is played admirably by Michelle Monaghan, an actress who is rising to the top of the heap of late with roles in movies like this one and North Country. The best performance in the movie, however, is turned in by Amy Ryan, who plays the mother of an abducted little girl. She is a coke-head, a drug mule, a drunk, in short, one of the worst mothers imaginable for a sweet young child.

     Affleck and Monaghan are hired by the little girl’s aunt to help find her. They are joined in their pursuit by a pair of cops, played by the excellent Ed Harris and John Ashton, and their search takes them through the seedy underbelly of Boston, dealing with drug dealers (some good and some bad) and general thugs who cause problems at every turn. Every time the movie seems to be reaching a certain conclusion, the script throws a twist into the plot, and all of a sudden Affleck and Monaghan are careening toward a different outcome. By the end of the film, the whole story becomes clear, and there is a final “showdown” that presents a Sophie’s Choice kind of ending, although not nearly so dramatic. This is the only minor quibble I have with the ending.

     The decision reached by the characters, the course of action they choose to take, seems like a massive moral decision that would cause most of us to really wonder what we would do in that situation. But a closer examination of that choice makes it seem obvious that there is really only one choice that could be made there, the choice Affleck eventually does make. I won’t tell you the details, I haven’t really revealed anything here, but you’ll have to watch the movie yourself. It is being released, again, in a bargain package with No Country For Old Men by Alliance Films on Tuesday, and really needs to be watched to be understood. Watch this movie.

Year:  2007
Genre:  Horror
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Marina Resa, Shirley To, Akiko Shima, Rick Irvin
Director:  Danny Draven
Run time:  90 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     There are many things that make Ghost Month awful.  One is the acting, which is somewhere between hardcore porn and softcore porn thespianism.  Without the boobs.  The two main stars, Marina Resa and Shirley To, are OK.  But every time another character is introduced, they appear to have been discovered at the casting for a Cash For Gold commercial.  Like, they are the ones who didn’t make it as the crazy guy who goes gaga gor gold.

     There are also some irritating special effects.  Two ghosts are haunting the stars of the film, and they occasionally appear out of a mist that exists for some reason.  One looks a lot like that painting The Scream, and the other looks very much like Michael Jackson.  Not saying Michael Jackson didn’t look scary, but if I’m laughing every time the ghost shows up, it leaves precious little reason for me to be frightened.

     There are virtually no scares at all in Ghost Month.  The basic premise is that one month of every year is the “ghost month”, and the Chinese believe that the gates of hell have been opened and the ghosts will come and get you if you don’t follow certain rules and observe certain customs (almost all of them apparently involve burning stuff).  Marina Resa has been hired as a housekeeper for a home run by Shirley To, a home that observes these rituals strictly.  Obviously something bad has happened there before, and the ghosts are angry…obviously.

     That’s the biggest problem with Ghost Month, I think.  It’s so obvious.  Many of the characters, especially Resa, have their own internal running monologues where they act as their own narrators.  On discovering a box, she will say “I wonder what’s in this” to herself.  Because we need to know exactly what’s going on in her head?  Or, she discovers blood on her hands and says “there’s blood on my hands”.  Thanks.  Without narration, how would we know what was going on?

     Any of these things, on their own, would make Ghost Month a bad movie.  All together, they make it an awful one.  This awful movie comes out February 23rd from Alliance Films.