Years:  2011, 2012
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, Rocky Carroll, Jamie Lee Curtis
Creator:  Donald P. Bellisario, Don McGill
Run time:  16 hours, 49 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I don’t mind when NCIS does the two or three part episodes. It’s a great show, and I can handle waiting for the next episode to find out what happens. But the way they closed out Season 9, with three parts of what could end up being a six part episode with a very annoying cliff hanger, is a lot too much.

     On August 21^st Paramount Home Entertainment releases Season 9 of NCIS on DVD, and I have now watched it all.  I really liked the first four discs, because they’re pretty much what I’ve come to expect from NCIS – a solid procedural crime show with a good cast. Yeah, there are some cop-out episodes where they get rid of Ziva’s boyfriend so they can keep playing on the sexual tension between her and Tony, but it’s a small complaint.

     My big complaint – and I do have a big complaint – is with the last two discs. Partly because of the annoying cliffhanger episodes, but mostly because of the introduction of Jamie Lee Curtis to the show. I like Jamie Lee Curtis, but her role is so badly written that it’s painful. She’s a super-agent in the psychological warfare division of…something…called psy-ops. And she’s all about the mind games, you see. So she’s sneaky and mysterious and devious and manipulative.

     Ostensibly, she has been introduced as a foil/romantic love interest for Mark Harmon’s Gibbs, as she’s supposed to be his intellectual and badass equal. But she doesn’t seem that way to me. To me, she just comes across as one of those incredibly irritating women who thinks she’s way smarter and way sexier than she actually is, and just ends up being creepy. And Jamie Lee Curtis, in Season Nine of NCIS, creeps me out. And it’s not (just) because she now looks exactly like my mom.

Years:  2011, 2012
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  LL Cool J, Chris O’Donnell, Linda Hunt, Peter Cambor, Daniela Ruah, Adam Jamal Craig, Barrett Foa, Claire Forlani
Creator:  Shane Brennan
Run time:  17 hours, 25 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment
Related reviews:  NCIS Season Seven, NCIS Season Eight, NCIS: LA Season One, NCIS: LA Season Two

     Even more so than NCIS, NCIS: LA is brainless fun. It’s loud, and flashy, and all buddy-coppy and generally generic. But muscular LL Cool J, brooding Chris O’Donnell, smoking hot Daniela Ruah and especially tiny little badass Linda Hunt make the otherwise run-of-the-mill subject matter truly entertaining.

     Season three of NCIS: LA comes to DVD August 21^st from Paramount Home Entertainment, and like Season nine of NCIS, it ends with an obnoxious cliffhanger that suggests Hetty is going to resign…again. At the end of every season, she’s either about to quit or about to be killed. I get it. But I also get that Hetty is the best part of the show, and it’s quite likely she’ll be back at the beginning of Season Four. Other than that, season three is as entertaining as usual, helped along by the addition of Claire Forlani for a number of episodes, giving us yet another pretty shiny thing to look at.

     NCIS: LA is like Lays potato chips. It’s tasty, has little substance, and you can’t watch just one episode. That’s why it is best watched on DVD, rather than on TV. When I watch an episode on TV, I forget it exists by the time the next week rolls around. On DVD, I can watch the entire season in a weekend and enjoy every minute.

Year:  2011
Genre:  TV series, Crime, Drama
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael C. Hall, Jennifer Carpenter, Desmond Harrington, Lauren Velez, David Zayas, James Remar
Guest stars:  Colin Hanks, Edward James Olmos, Mos Def  
Creator:  James Manos Jr.
Run time:  10 hours, 32 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The sixth season of Dexter comes out on DVD and Blu-Ray August 14^th from Paramount Home Entertainment. It’s as entertaining a show as ever, and I really liked Season Six, but it doesn’t quite live up to previous seasons. The reason for that is mostly the introduction of religion into the show, giving Dexter something of a crisis of faith, but also providing him with one of the weaker antagonists in recent years.

     Colin Hanks is good as the Doomsday Killer, but he just doesn’t seem as evil as previous serial killers who have gone up against Dexter. He’s less of a maniac serial killer genius, and more of an unfortunately violent insane religious nutjob. That’s one problem. The other problem I have with season six is the ending – not so much for the resolution of the serial killer story, but for the addition of yet another super-creepy story line. This is a show about a serial killer with a baby at home. Do we really need another skin-crawling plot twist?

     That being said, the final four minutes of the last episode of season six are legitimately heart-stopping, and make season seven that much more anticipated.  No telling where it’s gonna go, but it can only get creepier from here!

Year:   2011  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Director:  Alan Govenar
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     There is a very neat documentary coming out July 24^th from First Run Features about the Beat Hotel, a place in Paris where almost all the big-time artists of the Beat generation congregated over a number of years to hang out, get high and produce some of the great works of the 50s. William Burroughs, Alan Ginsberg, Peter Orlovsky, Gregory Corso, pretty much everyone except Jack Kerouac was there at one time or another.

     It was at the rundown, dirty, dirt-cheap Beat Hotel where Burroughs finished Naked Lunch, where Ginsberg wrote arguably his masterpiece, Kaddish, and where Corso wrote his famous controversial poem Bomb. This story is told in the documentary, as well as neat little anecdotes about Burroughs rehearsing his storytelling in the hallway and his infamous dream machine, or about Ginsberg and Orlovsky and their weird love triangles.

     Now, I keep using the word “neat” because that’s what The Beat Hotel is. It’s a neat little film full of neat stories about neat people. But it’s not great, mostly because they’re all dead. And although there are a few people who make appearances, there is really only one narrator, a photographer whose picture permeate the film. There are a few re-enacted scenes, and a sort of reunion celebrating the 50^th anniversary of Naked Lunch. In the end, the movie made me want to visit the Beat Hotel, in the 50s, but never gave me much more than that. The whole thing feels like an 80-minute snapshot of that five or six years when the beat artists lived together. And that’s just…kinda neat.

Year:   2011  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English, Chilean (with subtitles)
Directors:  Brian Lilla
Featuring:  Dam builders, dam opponents, and citizens of Chile
Run time:  80 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     On July 24^th, First Run Features releases Patagonia Rising, a documentary about a proposed dam project on rivers in Chile. This project would create five hydroelectric dams on two rivers, generating an enormous amount of electricity for the region but at a very high price.

     The environmentalists in the film explain the impact of massive dams in a very patient manner. Then some local farmers put a face on the environmental consequences that would result from the building of the dams. Then, I guess just to appear a little more balanced, they talk to the guy overseeing the project, who explains that the dams would produce electricity for the region equivalent to five coal fired plants and are therefore more environmentally friendly. In the end though, the film makers come down decidedly on the side of the people in the region and against the dams.

     This is all OK, but a lot of it feels like filler. I liked being walked through the effects dams have on the environment and the local ecosystems. Before now, the only thing I knew about dams was that I once went to the Hoover Dam and thought, holy cow, that’s big! It’s just that with the interviews of Chilean people who don’t seem to know much about the situation, Patagonia Rising felt like a 30—minute documentary stretched out to 80.

Year:   2011  
Genre:  Documentary
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Director:  Alex Trudeau Viriato
Featuring:  Fixed-gear cyclists
Run time:  40 minutes
DVD distributor:  First Run Features

     I was surprised to find out that there was a documentary about fixed-gear bike riding. That’s the kind of biking where you have only the one gear, and you brake by pedaling backwards.  Is there really enough information about this kind of activity to warrant a full-length feature documentary?

     Well, it turns out no. As Fixation, out on DVD July 24^th from First Run Features, runs only about 40 minutes. We meet riders in San Francisco who like that city because of the difficulty of the hills and the bike-friendly motorists. Then we meet others from Los Angeles, who like that city because of the great distances they can cover in a single day. There are also interviews with Olympic racers, bike polo players, and bike messengers.  They all like the fixed gear bikes. Okay.

     Not being a big time biker myself, I had a passing interest at best in this stuff, which meant that the 40 minute or so run time was perfect. I actually really enjoyed the snapshot of the culture, which I think is probably more suited to those unfamiliar with fixed-gear riding, as those in the scene already would know all about it. Fixation is interesting, it’s short, and it’s worth a look.

     Also – there is a sort-of vague Ottawa connection, the same way we claim Matthew Perry and Tom Cruise because of their brief residence here – the director of Fixation, Alex Trudeau Viriato, was born and raised in Ottawa before moving to California. So, there’s that, also.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Drama, Comedy, Romance, Silent
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Jean Dujardin, Berenice Bejo, John Goodman, Penelope Ann Miller, James Cromwell, Missi Pyle
Director:  Michel Hazanavicius
Run time:  100 minutes
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     I think that if the Oscars are ever going to retire, now is the time.  The Artist has given the Oscars the perfect out.  The movie awards are now perfectly bookended.  The silent movie Wings, a vapid but expensive action flick, won the first ever Best Picture Oscar in 1927.  The second silent movie to win Best Picture – The Artist, a deep and powerful low-budget movie about the end of the silent film era.

     In the 84 years of the Oscars, we’ve gone from a German actor, Emil Jannings, winning Best Actor, to France’s Jean Dujardin winning this year for The Artist.  We’ve gone from Americans of Austrian Hungarian and Russian descent to a French Lithuanian (Michel Hazanavicius) as Best Director, when The Artist took that one as well.

     So now, the Oscars have covered pretty much every country in the world, they’ve gone from silent films to talkies and back to silent films, they still love their black and white movies, and they still love artsy dramatic indie romance movies far more than blockbusters.

     And so I suggest to the Academy that NOW is the time to shut it down.  Before the Oscars become the Grammys.  Before the box office results of a movie makes it an automatic contender. Before The Avengers and The Hunger Games and the new Transformers battle it out for Best Picture the way Adele and Usher and Beyonce do every year for Best Album.  The Artist, on DVD and Blu-Ray June 26^th from Alliance Films, is not the best movie ever to win an Oscar. But it’s the best opportunity for the whole ceremony to walk away while it’s still at the top of its game.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Daniel Tosh
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     On June 12^th, Paramount Home Entertainment releases a DVD set of episodes of Tosh.O called Hoodies.  I’m not sure if this is just a collection of random episodes, or if it’s the first season of the show, or what, exactly, Hoodies means.  I do know that I like it.

     It seems like a pretty easy concept and a great way to make a TV show without a whole lot of effort.  Take whatever’s trending on youtube, play the videos, and make jokes about the dummies who hurt themselves or the dog that caused an explosion or the fat lady singing Skynyrd tunes.  Like a dirtier, meaner America’s Funniest Videos.  The great thing about Tosh.O, though, is that it’s exactly that. A really mean, VERY funny comedy show centered around internet memes. 

     I think the absolute best, most inspired segment on the show is the Web Redemption segment.  Daniel Tosh finds someone who has embarrassed themselves in a youtube video, and gives them a chance at redemption. The drunk guy who slammed into the garbage cans trying a slam dunk. The girl who fell off her table singing. The man who got himself stuck inside a balloon.

     These people get interviewed, they get put on TV, and they get another chance to do the thing at which they failed so badly the first time. It’s a fantastic segment and funny as hell. Well, except for the one featuring Chris Crocker, the “Leave Britney Alone” guy. That wasn’t funny so much as horrific. I advise you to skip that decidedly uncomfortable and creepy bit. The rest of Hoodies, though, I highly recommend.

Year:  2011, 2012
Genre:  Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Matt LeBlanc, Stephen Mangan, Tamsin Greig, John Pankow, Mircea Monroe, Kathleen Rose Perkins, Richard Griffiths
Creators:  David Crane (Friends), Jeffrey Klarik (Mad About You)
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     Episodes is a smart show from smart writers about smart people who once wrote a smart show and now have to write a dumb show for dumb people.  It stars Matt LeBlanc as himself, the guy who used to play Joey on Friends, trying to get away from his Joey character while playing a character who is almost exactly like Joey.

     Got that?  Alright, here’s a more concise version – Episodes is good.  It’s smart.  And Matt LeBlanc, playing himself, is very good at spoofing his own image while the show spoofs the whole television industry.  Season One of Episodes hits DVD June 12^th from Paramount Home Entertainment, and it’s well worth checking out if you haven’t yet seen it on Showtime. 

     A couple of British writers are recruited by a maniac TV executive to bring their successful show Lyman’s Boys over to America. Once in the States, the network makes change after change, turning a smart and successful British show starring the great Richard Griffiths into a stupid, painful pile of garbage starring Matt LeBlanc.

     Over the course of the first season Sean and Beverly, the British writers, have to come to grips with life in LA, they have to deal with stupid producers and stupider Matt LeBlanc, and their relationship comes unraveled as their show goes down the tubes. At the end of the season it appears the show will get dropped by the network because it’s terrible. But this is TV and that doesn’t seem to matter, because like 2 Broke Girls and Whitney, it gets picked up.

     Of course, that happens so that we’ll get a second season of Episodes. Which remains a very good, very funny show. So, by all logic, that means it should be canceled pretty soon. And if that happened, I don’t know if it would be disappointing, ironic, or absolutely perfect.

Year:  2011, 2012
Genre:  Comedy, TV series
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Kyle Newacheck, Maribeth Monroe, Jillian Bell, Edward Barbanell, and guest appearances by Clint Howard and Nicky Whelan
Creators:  Blake Anderson, Adam DeVine, Anders Holm, Kyle Newacheck
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     A couple of Workaholics releases June 5^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  The second season comes out on DVD, and also a Blu-Ray combo package of Seasons One and Two.  The second season of the Comedy Central show is as good as the first, and had me busting a gut over and over.  And I was totally sober when I watched it!

     The second season starts out with a stolen dragon statue, the subsequent RE-stealing of that same dragon statue, and a very funny undercover operation at the local high school.  Then they try to go sober, moon over a new smoking hot co-worker, Anders goes through a midlife crisis at the age of 25, and the guys hide out in sewers like the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles.  It sounds pretty formulaic and easy when I say it like that, but I can’t convey the insanity or stupidity or sheer fun of watching Workaholics, even without a giant bong in the middle of the room.

     Of course, people who know the show likely have season one already.  And you’ll just go out and buy season two whether I recommend it or not because you know it’s great.  For the rest of you, get the combo package.  Season one and two together.  It’s like getting the munchies with a giant bag of popcorn in front of you.  I bet you watch the whole thing in a day.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Action
Country:  United States
Language:   English
Starring:  Gina Carano, Ewan McGregor, Antonio Banderas, Michael Douglas, Michael Fassbender, Channing Tatum, Michael Angarano 
Director:  Steven Soderbergh
DVD distributor:  Alliance Films

     I don’t think Haywire was designed as a starring vehicle for MMA superstar Gina Carano.  Yes, Carano has serious star power.  She’s definitely hot, and unlike 99% of the female action stars out there she has serious ass-kicking bonafides, in that she was a real force in womens’ mixed martial arts for a few years.

     But when fighters or wrestlers or someone of that ilk tries to break into movies, it’s never done this way.  When John Cena or Stone Cold Steve Austin stars in a movie, it’s directed by some guy who runs cameras at WWE Raw and maybe once did a 1-800-Victim-2 commercial, and it co-stars Treat Williams. If you’re lucky.

     But then we get Haywire.  Which stars Gina Carano of the MMA.  And it’s directed by Steven Soderbergh (Out of Sight, Traffic, Ocean’s Eleven).  And it stars Ewan McGregor.  And Michael Fassbender.  And Antonio Banderas and Michael Douglas and Channing Tatum.  You know, people with NAMES.  And – even more rarely for a fighter’s starring vehicle – it’s GOOD.

     Carano is an operative for some kind of secret, high-level independant contractor that specializes in black ops.  She is betrayed by her employers and goes on a prolonged rampage where she kills people and beats up other people.  It’s pretty cool, if a little predictable.  Nothing we haven’t seen before, but slick.

     One thing though.  For those of you looking for a super-hot chick who can kick ass, you’re still better off renting Underworld for the ninth time and looking at Kate Beckinsale in tight leather.  Because although Gina Carano IS blazingly hot, Soderbergh has purposefully dulled her up through most of the movie.  And even at her hottest, she is no Kate Beckinsale.  Compared to other MMA fighters, she’s a 25 out of 10. (Cyborg, I’m looking at you.)  But compared to Hollywood actresses, she’s middle of the pack.  That being said, the fact that she can kick my ass is a huge selling point for me.  I love this woman.

     All I’m saying is that you shouldn’t seek out Haywire based on the female lead.  Carano is great, but the movie stands on its own merits – frenetic, fast-paced action, big stunts, and a whole bunch of silly but fun black-ops intrigue and fistfights.  That’s more than enough for me.

Year:  2008, 2011
Genre:  Drama
Countries:  Ireland, UK
Language:  English
Starring:  Michael Fassbender, Liam Cunningham, Brian Milligan, Liam McMahon, Carey Mulligan
Director:  Steve McQueen
Run time:  96 minutes, 101 minutes 

Shame (********8/10)

     On April 17^th, Alliance Films releases the Blu-Ray DVD combo package of Shame, Steve McQueen’s dark and creepy art film about sexual addiction starring the great Michael Fassbender and Carey Mulligan.

     There’s a lot of nudity.  There are naked women throughout the movie, which is a selling point for high definition.  But the nudity is treated so starkly, both male and female, that although a lot of it is titillating, it made me feel dirty for being titillated.  Which is quite a remarkable accomplishment in filmmaking, I think.  Shame really is a great movie, but I would be hard pressed to say I enjoyed it.  It’s like watching a really brutal  boxing match.  You appreciate the artistry, but you can’t help but cringe at the carnage.  And it’s Fassbender that makes this work.  He is so compulsive, and so depraved and lost to his own urges that it really is difficult to watch.  Carey Mulligan plays his sister, and she has some of the same personality traits, thanks to a shared trauma they went through as children.

     Shame is certainly not for everyone.  It is not the movie for people who watch movies for nudity.  It’s not a movie for people who want a happy ending or humour or fast-paced filmmaking.  But it IS a movie for people who appreciate terrific moviemaking.  Even then, I don’t expect they’ll be watching it more than once.

Hunger (*********9/10)

     There is precious little dialogue in Hunger.  Those seeking action, or talking, will have to look elsewhere for their fix.  Those seeking phenomenal movie making, however, need look no further than this story about the final days of Bobby Sands.  Sands, for those of you (like me) who were not around for his story, was an IRA prisoner in a British prison who led a hunger strike in the early 80s, leading to the death of ten inmates, including himself.  Although this is the central story in the docudrama, we don’t even meet Bobby Sands until the movie is about halfway done.

     In the meantime, director Steve McQueen (who really ought to have changed his name before getting into film, if he was going to do films this good – I mean really, that would be a fine name for the director of Buxom Bitches of the Badlands or something, but Hunger is no B-movie) sets the tone with a look inside the prison.  The utter chaos of the “troubles”, the almost incomprehensible actions of both the IRA prisoners and their British captors, and the general tone of confusion that surrounded the whole thing.  We meet a prison guard who is constantly in fear of assassination.  We meet two IRA prisoners who join with their brethren in a “no wash” strike, where they refuse to bathe or shave and they pour their urine into the hall and smear the walls with their feces and do other disgusting things.  For some reason.

     The only real dialogue in the film comes soon after Sands (Michael Fassbender) is introduced for the first time, as he sits down with a priest (Liam Cunningham) for a long, incredible, powerful talk about his impending hunger strike (among other things).  This is some of the best acting I have seen on film in a long time, as Fassbender and Cunningham sit across from each other, in one extremely long take, discussing the reasons to go on a hunger strike and the reasons not to go on a hunger strike.  The camera doesn’t move, the actors move very little, and the only action in the scene is the pair of them smoking.  And it’s one of the most riveting scenes I can remember.

     The best thing about that scene, and the movie as a whole, is that it perfectly captures the questionable motivation behind Sands’ actions.  He is certainly willing to die for his cause, and his beliefs, but he is also willing to take his fellow soldiers down with him, and I could never really understand exactly what he wanted to accomplish with the strike.  I suspect that to this day, nobody really knows.  Or at least, no one really understands.  But I believed Michael Fassbender understood, when he was sitting in that room with Liam Cunningham, and that is the best reason to watch the film.

     I watch movies in my living room, and in my living room there is a clock that ticks.  It’s not terribly loud, so I never notice it when I’m watching a movie in full surround sound cranked up to eleven.  But I certainly noticed that tick-tock while watching Hunger.  The movie is almost silent much of the time, as people sit around in prison.  I was about to take the batteries out of the clock, but I realized that it added a little something extra to the film.  It was the perfect companion to prison, and made it feel even more so like time was passing incredibly slowly.  The movie appears to be going incredibly slowly as well.  But in fact, it isn’t.  It’s slow, but it’s just incredible.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Action, Thriller
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Tom Cruise, Paula Patton, Simon Pegg, Jeremy Renner, Michael Nyqvist
Director:  Brad Bird
Run time:  133 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     The absolute worst advertisement for Mission: Impossible 4 is the first three Mission Impossibles.  Oh, I know, the first one was okay.  Maybe even decent.  But the second and third movies were two of the worst blockbusters of all time.  Well, until Transformers came along.

     So you would have every reason to believe that the fourth Mission: Impossible¸ Ghost Protocol, was going to be a steaming pile of turd from the get-go.  I went into this one fully expecting to be cringing and weeping by the halfway mark.  But I was wrong.  SO wrong.  Ghost Protocol is, in fact, AWESOME! 

     Gone are John Woo and JJ Abrams, the directors of the last two films.  Instead it’s Brad Bird, the Pixar director of The Incredibles and Ratatouille directing the fourth movie, his first live-action film, and a huge success.  It’s a non-stop whirlwind film, with Tom Cruise, Jeremy Renner, Simon Pegg and Paula Patton jetsetting around the world to Mumbai and Moscow, among (many) other places. 

     There is some solid humour, some great dialogue, and some of the most incredibly breathtaking stunts I’ve ever seen in a movie.  The scene where Tom Cruise climbs the outside of the highest building in the world in Dubai is positively heart-stopping.  Woody, who has a fear of heights, would not watch this scene.  I think because he didn’t want anyone to see him cry.

     Of course, Mission Impossible four is as silly as the other three, with the masks and the explosions and the contact-lens-fax-machine-scanner gadgets and so forth.  But it has a huge leg up in that it’s well made, well acted, and it actually MAKES  SENSE!  This is by far the best of the Mission Impossible movies, and one of the best major blockbusters in recent years.  And it’s on DVD April 17^th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

     On April 3^rd, Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing a stand-up DVD called Lights Out, featuring Filipino stand-up comic Jo Koy.  It’s Koy’s second stand-up special DVD after Don’t Make Him Angry, which came out three years ago, in 2009.  At that time, I predicted that Jo Koy would not be remembered very long, and would be off our radar by 2011.  I was clearly wrong.

     I said that then because I didn’t like Don’t Make Him Angry.  It was all ethnic jokes about being Filipino, and lame attempts at edginess with reference to his kid.  Lights Out is a lot of the same stuff, but it IS (marginally) better.  This time, he riffs on his mother a lot, and some of the edgy stuff is good in that he no longer seems to be trying too hard.  His bit about his mom grabbing his wiener when he was a kid feels real, and a bit about her standing at the foot of his bed monitoring his sleep patterns is very funny.

     I’m still not a big Jo Koy fan.  The really funny bits in this particular routine were few and far between.  And I still find him more tepid than terrific.  But Lights Out is better than Don’t Make Him Angry, so I feel like three years from NOW, I might actually find that Jo Koy has become decent.

Year:  2011
Genre:  Remake, Drama, Garbage
Country:  United States
Language:  English
Starring:  Kenny Wormald, Julianne Hough, Dennis Quaid, Andie MacDowell, Miles Teller
Eye candy:  Hough, Ziah Colon, Kim Dickens
Director:  Craig Brewer
Run time:  113 minutes
DVD distributor:  Paramount Home Entertainment

     I’m not sure that Footloose was any good in 1984.  And I know that today, it just hasn’t held up well over time, and is as dated as any movie has ever been.  So it would seem like a good idea to do a remake for today’s audiences, who watch Kevin Bacon doing a tractor race and roll their eyes and smirk when watching the original.

     The problem with doing a remake though, is that the idea was a pretty cheesy, bad one to begin with.  And the 2011 version of Footloose does absolutely nothing to change any of the things that made the original lame.  Oh, it’s different alright.  See now, in 2011, instead of a tractor race it’s a race in schoolbusses.  And instead of listening to Quiet Riot’s “Bang Your Head” on his car’s tape deck, Ren McCormack now listens to…Quiet Riot’s “Bang Your Head”.  On an iPod. 

     The premise is still exactly the same – new kid comes to a town where they have outlawed dancing and fun and have imposed a curfew.  He piques the interest of the minister’s daughter and changes the town and blah blah blah. 

     The only bright spot in this remake, out March 6^th from Paramount Home Entertainment, is the ludicrously hot Julianne Hough, who wears totally hot slutty clothes through the whole movie so that Ren can change her into the good girl she’s supposed to be and get her into like a turtleneck or something at the end.

     Everything that was lame and dated about the original Footloose remains intact in the remake.  The same music.  The same small town jerks and small town cool guys.  Ren’s best friend is played by Miles Teller, who seems to have been cast based solely on his remarkable resemblance to Peyton Manning. 

     The worst thing in the movie though has to be the finale.  Of course, the kids finally break out and dance to assert their freedom!  Which is as I expected.  But dude, it’s 2011.  And what are they dancing to?  What music makes them move?  Is it Cee-Lo, or Deadmouse?  No.  These kids celebrate their modern independence and throwing off the shackles of their oppressive parents by kickin it to…Footloose.  A (very slightly) amped up version, admittedly, as done by Blake Shelton.  But it’s still Footloose, and it still sucks.