Penelope, dir. Mark Palansky (2006)

NIKKI says:
And the movie about the girl with the pig nose goes straight into my Top 5 for the year. It even makes me kind of mad that an overly-whimsical, bite-less, so-called subversive picture like Enchanted should be the hottest thing on the rental wall this month when this movie exists.

Penelope is a colourful, beautiful mix of fantasy and comedy, a fairytale with an edge. I expected something cute, but I just adored everything about this movie. The story is great, the actors are sensational, the production design is like nothing I've ever seen before, and the vibes the movie gives off just make you feel so good. I was fully wrapped up in it, and will be raving about it forever.

The stand-out things for me were:

1. James McAvoy's brilliant American accent.
2. The New York-or-London guessing game the movie plays, with its royal characters and old-timey buildings, set in and around a sprawling city populated with Americans.
3. Penelope's make-up -- it looked so real, it was her normal face that looked wrong.
4. Christina Ricci's eyes -- I challenge anyone not to completely love her after this movie. She's just a little fairytale princess, with the most expressive face. You can just tell this role means a lot to her -- she's so into it, and seems to really be this person, with these insecurities.
5. Reese Witherspoon NOT annoying me. I have a hard time with her in most movies, but here she was great. And I loved her hair.
6. Peter Dinklage getting hit in the face with a car door. He is so funny in this movie.
7. The colours -- everything in red and green and purple. It's SO beautiful. It's like you're in a picture-book.
8. The Joby Talbot music -- all the songs are great, especially Joby's, and the final one by James Greenspun.
9. Ronni Ancona from The Sketch Show in a real movie?! Awesome.
10. The overall theme of self-acceptance, which just had me wanting to cry every time they showed poor Penelope locked in her room, away from the world.
11. Penelope's purple coat.

Just a great movie. Absolutely loved it. Everyone should see it.

5/5

Hack!, dir. Matt Flynn (2007)

NIKKI says:
How is a film like this even allowed? It's mind-bogglingly stupid, puerile, lame, and boring. What the HELL is Winnie Cooper DOING? I can understand Adrienne Frantz -- post B&B careers are rarely that great. And Sean Kanan -- same as above, and he's only done one thing worth remembering, and if you forgot what that was, he'll remind you in this movie, only I'm probably the only one in the world to fully get it ("You're next LaRusso! I own you!"). And Gabrielle Richens isn't even an actor.

But WINNIE COOPER? Come on -- she doesn't need the paycheck from what I can ascertain. Winnie, I have lost all respect for you. And I had lots.

This is just a piece of shit, with no redeeming qualities whatsoever. It tries to be all cool with its movie references, but they're the kinds of references any jerkhole can make. Here's a Hack!-like movie reference:

Character A: So, Jaws was a movie.

And that's it.

Dumb.

.5/5

STEVE says:
I said as soon as this one started, "This is going to hurt." And it did.

Jesus, it did.

I kept thinking maybe it was meant to be a satire, but I couldn't entirely convince myself that it was true. Let's assume for a moment that it was, though: It even failed at that. Hack! used brute force to make you see how clever it was (the boat that carries the students to the island is called the Orca), then pushes your face in it and stands on your neck (the captain reveals that his favorite movie is Jaws). When it's done with such shameless bravado, the satirical element gets lost in the mix. (And what's the point of making Jaws references in a slasher movie, anyway?)

But Hack! wasn't clever, it wasn't funny, and it wasn't even so-bad-it's-good. It just made me want to swallow broken glass.

.5/5

An American Crime, dir. Tommy O'Haver (2007)

NIKKI says:
This one sparked my interest because of its subject matter, and it was about a case I'd not previously heard of. The little bit I read about it, I wanted more and more to see it. Gertrude Baniszewski sounded, to me like particularly fascinating character. The case itself is horrifying, and yet Gertrude appeared to be unaware she was doing something so depraved. So, too, did the local kids (including her own kids) who assisted in torturing Sylvia Likens -- the girl Gertrude held captive in her basement for the purposes of "teaching her a lesson". That Catherine Keener and Ellen Page were the leads, I expected something really good -- introspective, scary, educational.

Instead, I got a brutal TV-ish movie, which takes the viewer through the atrocities of the crime, step by ghastly step, without ever offering any real insight into just why Gertrude acted the way she did. The film offers standard answers to the question -- it was the time, the situation (Sylvia's carny parents left Sylvia and her sister with Gertrude while they worked the carnival scene), she was wrapped up in God, she was without money, she was desperate to ensure her daughters remained pure. But how did she come to beat and abuse poor Sylvia? Why Sylvia and not her sister? Why not both? How did it come to be that Gertrude's kids abused Sylvia, too? And the neighbour kids? Who are these kids that they find nothing so bad about burning a teenager with cigarettes and whipping her? How did this go undetected for so long?

The film exists not to instruct about these things, but to show us what happened according to court transcripts. The horror of the thing is this film's main point. Or it seems to be, at least. Nothing is offered beyond a fact by fact re-enactment. And what, really, is the point of that? It could have been a 20/20 episode, for all that. The answers required here are tragically beyond this filmmaker.

I was happy to finally see Ellen Page in a different sort of role from her smarmy-teen norm. I thought she was very good here, reserved, and true to her character. It's just a pity she wasn't able to do more than scream and cry, which is all I wanted to do after watching this. If a movie is going to be this harsh, it needs some sort of balance. it needs release. This just hit us over the head with the crime and then punished the criminals. I'm not sure the real story of these two women is just so black and white.

2/5

All the Boys Love Mandy Lane, dir. Jonathan Levine (2006)

NIKKI says:
Friday the 13th... you've got to watch a horror movie. This looked like the perfect kind of movie to celebrate the date: A teen slasher with a great title, that looked like it could actually be somewhat okay. That's the best you can hope for, I reckon, with horror movies these days: Please be somewhat okay. You're so shocked when that happen, you're all: Wow, it was somewhat okay! I'm giving it five stars!

This was... somewhat okay. The script was beat-perfect. Kills and scares all coming exactly when they needed to. So, we knew whoever was behind the movie had some sense of what they were doing. The kills were good, the effects were well done. The ending was interesting. The actors weren't bad. The only thing that let them down was poor writing -- they were all sex-obsessed, pot-smoking jerks. And while that might be a staple of these kinds of films, there's a way of writing characters like that so that they're likable. That was not the case here, and really let the film down.

Still, because the script was put together so well, I walked away respecting it. I was disappointed, though, that the final twist did not have ample set up. I can understand why certain characters acted the way they did, but I think a line here and there preceding the reveal would have helped to strengthen that aspect of the movie. I think the writers might have been so afraid of showing their hands, that they refused to give off any hints of what was going on. It worked on some levels and not on others -- which is to say, the final reveal is sensational, but we'd guessed it back at the 20-minute mark.

I'm giving this one the benefit of the doubt, though. In the sludge of offensive horror knock-offs, this one stands above as a movie that knows the rules, does its best to subvert them, and the genuinely shocks and thrills. If only its kids weren't so stupid -- I so wanted to care more when underwear girl was running from the car near the end. Still -- nice effort.

3/5

STEVE says:
Grading on a curve, as we have to these days, Mandy Lane was better than most slasher flicks. It was well-plotted and necessarily bloody without going overboard, and that scores it extra points. But looking at it in a vacuum, away from its progenitors and the rest of the copy-cats, it's really nothing special.

Mandy Lane plays with the conventions of the slasher genre, but doesn't do anything particularly interesting with them. I called the killer in the first scene, and Nikki called the twist - which was good, but not particularly surprising - about halfway through. The cast is pretty much the same group of reprehensible dickhead teens you've seen in a thousand other movies of this type (the stoner, the jock, the token black), and - as in those - you either want to see them dead, or couldn't care less, so there's no one to empathize with but the killer, who we can't really empathize with because we're not given a motive until the end.

Interesting but unexceptional, I thought Mandy Lane was going to raise the bar. As it is, it just cleared it.

3/5

Revolver, dir. Guy Ritchie (2005)

STEVE says:
Jesus Christ, I just want to punch Guy Ritchie in the face.

1/5

NIKKI says:
It just kept going. And going and going. It would not stop. And the longer it went, the more pretentious, more stupid, more stupefyingly boring it got.

I now understand why this received such a critical hammering. Style over substance is a massive understatement, and it's not even worth watching for its style because you've already seen Quentin Tarantino, Brian DePalma, and Tony Scott perfect these same stylistic moves in their films.

I don't quite know what Guy Ritchie thinks he's doing here. Is this a metaphysical look inside the mind of the gangster? A peek behind the gritty crime curtain with a New Age spin? Is it a rip-off of The Prisoner, only instead of "Number One", we've got "Mr. Good"? Who the hell knows. I just know the repetition of the super-deep quotes about ego and control was so dumb, it was embarrassing. It's as is Ritchie wanted you to guess the ending, he was pushing it so hard. And the whole thing says nothing about ego and mind-control, or the ravages of a depraved mind -- if indeed it was trying to say anything new about those things at all.

I hated everything about this movie, right down to Ray Liotta's butt (normally, of course, something I might not mind having a look at). I felt myself drowning in pretentiousness. Steve and I kept looking at the clock, just desperate for it to end.

It made no sense. It was boring. The action was lame. The only good thing about it was Andre 3000's wardrobe. Which you just know he picked himself.

1/5

Step Up 2: The Streets, dir. Jon Chu (2008)

NIKKI says:
They keep making them, I'll keep watching them. If there's one thing I'm addicted to more than crappy horror, it's teen dance flicks. And now that the '80s are in vogue again, there's a lot more body-popping and breakin' going on in these movies, and I just can't get enough of that.

This one was as inoffensive and standard as the first movie. In fact, it was very near a remake of its predecessor, only now it's a chick from the wrong side of the tracks who struggles to fit in with her fellow dance students at a big, special Maryland dance school.

Let's see: Andie is a member of the 410 gang that goes about dance-vandalising property. The crew is all about family and togetherness, yet when Andie gets this huge opportunity at the school, all her 410 crew members do is slam her for not being loyal to them. Them being loyal to and supportive of HER never comes into question. It just becomes a street dancers vs. school dancers thing, and you know how that's going to go.

Andie finds her own crew in the school, and starts to fit in with nice kids. So, it's all very cute and nice. It attempts edge through its crazy dancing, and a little street-fighting scene, it's costuming and it's "urban"-ness (the tagline, for instance). But it owes more to Kids, Inc. than Fame. There's no grit, and perhaps that's what I'm missing? These movie need a charge of some kind, to bring them into the real world. And the writers could perhaps try and find a way to tweak the subject matter -- like they did with Roll Bounce, which even Steve kinda enjoyed.

Still, I liked the music, the actors were good, and I'll watch groups of kids dance-fighting 'til the end of time.

2/5

Steve did not view.

Barton Fink, dir. Joel Coen (1991)

STEVE says:
You can have Fargo and No Country for Old Men. This is the best Coen Brothers movie out there. I'm not sure I completely understand it, but that's part of its appeal: Barton Fink is like a cinematic Rorschach test - it's going to be different things to different people.

I've never had the guts to do it, but I always thought Barton Fink would make a great triple bill with Naked Lunch and Eraserhead. We could make t-shirts up and give them away as prizes to anyone who makes through all three without becoming a drooling mass in the end.

5/5

Nikki did not view.

My Spy (aka. My Mom's New Boyfriend), dir. George Gallo (2007)

NIKKI says:
Somebody needs to talk to Meg Ryan. Don't be fooled by the shot of her over there on the poster, which looks like it could be from City of Angels or, as Steve guessed, Proof of Life. In this movie, Meg's face looks like a ghostly mess of plastic pulls and tugs. When she smiles, she creates creases on her face that weren't there before. Creases like when you're putting contact on a book and you get that stretchy bubble. You just wanna press it down, but that looks ugly, so you have to cut it, make a long hole, and delicately stick the edges down.

Meg Ryan looks like the she needs her face cut open and her edges stuck down.

It is distracting, her weird mouth and crazy demon-eyes. Every second character in this movie, too, described her as so beautiful. She had men lusting after her, and yet she looks like a bag of bones with a fish head. I'm sorry Meg Ryan -- but what have you done?!?! All I could think about was that it made sense for Antonio Banderas to find her beautiful since he's married to the second most ridiculous new face in Hollywood. Meg Ryan looks like Goldie Hawn in First Wives Club. It's embarrassing.

Anyway, the movie... I could not feel more "meh" about this one. It was pretty standard -- mom is a flighty babe who loves younger men, her son in the FBI wants her to act her age, his fiancee reckons they should set her up, along comes Antonio who is just divine, until the son discovers hes an art thief. Then the son goes about bugging the mom's home and listening to her have sex. Almost...

I don't know, perhaps the comedy was just too broad in this one for me? I didn't care for Meg bouncing around trying to be 21, and I got tired of the exasperated son, and his character-less fiancee. Antonio held my interest, but his great love for Meg was underdeveloped -- or maybe just unrealistic when taking her bubbles into account. The story played out as expected, and Steve picked the twist ending before we were even halfway through.

Nothing to rave about. This makes me want to watch that Michelle Pfeiffer movie, I Could Never Be Your Woman -- now there's a woman growing old with style.

2.5/5

STEVE says:
I had this whole thing I was going to do about how Meg Ryan looks like a blow-up sex doll, but I don't think I can beat "bag of bones with a fish head", so I'll let it go.

My Spy was inoffensive, but not very good in the end. The intrigue aspect wasn't all that intriguing because you just knew Bandaras wasn't going to be a real art thief. There's no way the filmmakers were going to let Meg go off in the end with the bad guy, and there's equally no way she was going to have her heart broken by said bad guy. What are the options? Clearly, he's not a bad guy. Indeed, he ended up being an undercover CIA agent - which was pretty much telegraphed from the pre-title sequenced when Bandaras gets busted for trying to steal a statue from a museum in France, gets busted, but is absolutely certain he's going to be free after one phone call. Seriously, not even five minutes into the movie.

Then, there was the mildly creepy plot device of having Colin Hanks listening in on his mom as she and the "art thief" are hooking up. Ew. He'd never be put in charge of this case because his emotional attachment would compromise the integrity of the investigation. But as ever, uncomfortable comic situations win out over logic. What are you gonna do?

Did I say this was inoffensive? I take it back: My Spy was offensive, but in a way that's forgivable because it's not being lauded as one of the greatest movies ever (*cough* Juno).

2/5

Conspiracy, dir. Adam Marcus (2008)

NIKKI says:
It's been so long since we've watched a Val Kilmer movie. When I saw this cover, it was the last thing I expected to see him in -- the big gun, the fire in the background. That cover looks more like a Van Damme pic, or, at the very least, Vin Diesel.

But covers can be deceiving. This is not a shoot 'em up, but the story of a decorated veteran searching for his friend. It has its share of violence and blood, but it's really about a man solving a mystery, forging on through the barriers in New Lago that want him out of town and far away from the secrets of the small imitation-Western town.

Val, really, made the film enjoyable. Were Vin Diesel or Van Damme in the lead, it may not have been so successful, because apart from the humanness of the main character, little about the film was truly memorable. The bad guys were just too over the top, and the fact that the town was decked out to look like the OK Corral added a heavy-handedness to the whole thing about good and evil and right and wrong and black coats and white coats. That aspect of it bordered on the absurd, and I don't think that's what the movie was going for.

"This cowboy hat is all the protection a man should ever need," says Gary Cole as he walks onto a construction site. Right.

Cole and his cronies were way over the top, too. Just beating Val senseless whenever they could. I don't know of anywhere in the world where the authorities have that sort of power, or bloodlust, even. It could have been authentic, but here we had battles in public, Cole never once trying to hide his disdain for Kilmer, and then they shoot him (or do they?) and you think: Who in this town is NOT going know who did that?

So, the movie had its issues. But it was interesting enough, and Val was good to watch as the stealthy vet with one leg who gets his own back at every turn. The ultimate message? War is bad? America is run by evil megalomaniacs who will go to outrageous lengths to ensure their wells of cash keep flowing? Tell us something we don't know.

2.5/5

STEVE says:
Nikki is spot-on when she compares this to a Van Damme flick. It had the same kind of over-the-top violence and leftist agenda that his films tend to have. Throw Val Kilmer into the mix, and I can't help thinking that maybe this movie knew it was going down that road and might have been something of a satire. But probably not, huh?

Y'know what else it reminded me of? An episode of The Incredible Hulk. Not any specific episode, just Hulk in general. That show (most shows that follow the Les Miserables template, actually) followed the same basic premise for most of it's five-year run: David Banner stumbles into a new town in search of a cure, befriends a waitress, ends up on the wrong side of the law, generally overseen by a corrupt sheriff who happens to be the waitress' abusive father, brother or husband, and Hulks out halfway through, only to get bested by the sheriff and his men, run away, recover, and come back to Hulk out again in the end, saving the waitress and kicking the sheriff's ass.

Conspiracy followed that formula to a T. It was uncanny, really. Kilmer stumbles into New Lago in search of his friend, befriends a shop owner, ends up on the wrong side of the law, overseen by a corrupt businessman who happens to be the shop owner's abusive boyfriend, and Hulks out halfway through, only to get bested by the businessman and his men, run away, recover, and come back to Hulk out again in the end, saving the shop owner and kicking the businessman's ass.

This is so cool - these things write themselves! Check it out:

Van Damme stumbles into town in search of some loot, befriends Rosanna Arquette, ends up on the wrong side of the law, overseen by a corrupt sheriff who happens to be Rosanna Arquette's sometime lover, and Hulks out halfway through, only to get bested by the sheriff and his men, run away, recover, and come back to Hulk out again in the end, saving Rosanna Arquette and kicking the sheriff's ass.

It's like Mad-Libs! Try it at home, it's fun!

2.5/5

Street Kings, dir. David Ayer (2008)

NIKKI says:
If I didn't know better, I would have thought this movie was about hockey. I'm hating the title. The movie, I thought, wasn't that terrible. It's been very poorly reviewed in the major papers, most complaints leveled at Keanu and the film's brutal, "dirty" violence. One review said it was like Lethal Weapon meets The Shield, but not a very good rip-off of either.

Well, I can see the issues here. It would appear the film is supposed to be a mystery, with Keanu's character, Ludlow, having to figure out who is behind a cop shooting that's being pinned on him. He has the motive, he was there, everyone already hates him, but he didn't do it -- we know that, and without too much effort, we can guess who did do it. So it's less a who-done-it and more a why-and-how-done-it.

Does that make the thing predictable? In a way, but it's not so bad that it ruins the entire film. I enjoyed the team-up between Keanu and Chris Evans. They created some good drama, and I believed their search. I don't think Ludlow would have realistically pinpointed the bad guys right away. So I was convinced when he was leaning on known drug-runners, and digging for the answers.

The eventual showdown between Keanu and the bad guys was tense and exciting, even if the message behind it was slightly stale. The script, by James Ellroy, is supposedly based on the OJ Simpson trial, so that might be why it feels so dated. Maybe back when Lethal Weapon came out, we would have been shocked to find bad guys like these, but we've had The Shield over five years now, so NOTHING shocks us anymore.

The best thing about this movie? Keanu was just great. I know everyone bags him for his apparent lack of acting talent, and I can see what they mean. I've never felt, though, that he can't act, just that his speech patterns are a bit strange, and make it sound like he can't act. Throw him in Bill and Ted where his slow drawl fits with the character, and he's great. Here, though, he was just excellent. I don't think I've ever seen him as angry as he was here, and his face-offs with Chris Evans and Hugh Laurie and Forest Whitaker were really something to see.

Not a great movie, but certainly deserving of more than its 36% over at Rotten Tomatoes.

3/5

STEVE says:
Keanu Reeves as a tough-guy cop. I've seen Speed and I'm still not sure I buy it. But he made it work in Street Kings.

The comparisons to The Shield and Lethal Weapon are pretty obvious, but making those comparisons is like a short-cut to thinking. There's more going on in this movie than seems at first - even though it becomes pretty clear what's going on well-before midpoint - and watching how it all comes out in the end is half the fun. Sure, we can see what's going on with Forrest Whitaker and the rest of the crew, but we don't know how or why (well "why" is pretty much always answered with "money" or "power", and that's not contradicted here), and that's what kept me watching.

I must note, though, that this movie had a case of Timothy Hutton Syndrome. I said to Nikki, "Jay Mohr's not in the movie for nothing", to which she replied, "Neither is John Corbett". And guess who turned out to be bad cops? Uh huh. They were, for all intents and purposes, featured extras, but by casting "names" their characters were put in the spotlight. I wonder if the twists would have been so easy to pick if they'd been played by less recognizable faces.

2.5/5

Garden of Love, dir. Olaf Ittenbach (2003)

NIKKI says:
Just look at that poster... as if I'm not going to rent it. I was hoping for an undiscovered horror classic and got a movie worthy of the MST3K treatment. This was shockingly awful. But not in you typical shockingly awful way. The writing was so misguided that it almost became endearing. Just try to watch the scene where Rebecca is told of her father's crimes in detail and tell me you don't just want to give the movie a big hug for trying.

But the plot is not the point here. It's background, really, with the effects taking centre stage. This one is all about the kills, and they're actually very effective. The director is apparently a modern-day German Tom Savini, responsible for the gore work on Bloodrayne, Seed, and Uwe Boll's new Tunnel Rats.

The basic, basic plot is this: a girl starts seeing her dead father in TV screens and learns she is the sole survivor of a massacre 12 years before in which her father slaughtered about eight of his friends. Rebecca lived, but lost all memory of the event... until now! Now she hears her father beckoning to "join him" at their old farm, because things are not as they seem. Cue lightning strike.

Rebecca gets a few people killed on her way to learning the truth about the Garden of Love Massacre. You'll guess the ending a mile off, and marvel at the script that lets a guy get an electric drill several time to the face and live to converse.

The acting is poor, the direction is terrible, the editing is almost non-existent (five-minute soliloquys without cuts or coverage -- it's like a play!), and the plot holes are so big, my entire head could fit through them. (They kill a guy for his daughter's inheritance, get it all, then have to kill her to get her inheritance?!?!?)

But we laughed and laughed. I said to Steve -- I'll remember this one fondly for as much as we laughed during it. So bad, so silly, so brutal.

1.5/5

STEVE says:
Short of outright recommending Garden of Love, I will say that it wasn't a complete waste of time. I mean, it was complete and utter shite, but it did have two things going for it: 1) the effects, which were kick-ass, in-camera splatter and gore effects and not CGI, thank the maker, and 2) the unintentional hilarity-bordering-on-absurdity of the script.

I have to give a heads-up to the film's costume designers, Cordula Jung and Barbara Schwarz. I knew this movie was going to be a laff-riot when the professor/love interest came sauntering in wearing a cravat without a hint of irony. Thank you, ladies.

1/5

Sometimes They Come Back, dir. Tom McLoughlin (1991)

NIKKI says:
It's no secret -- back in the day, I had the majorest thing for Robert Rusler. He was just so tanned and manly, and cool and evil in pretty much everything. I first saw him in, I guess, Vamp, which I watched over and over because of him. And he was in a Nightmare on Elm Street movie, which I watched over and over because of him. And he was in Thrashin', which I watched over and over because of him and Brooke McCarter, who I thought was cool until I found out he was responsible for this.

He was just showing up all over between 1988 and 1992. Sometimes They Come Back was on high rotation for me because of him, too. I couldn't get enough. I remember just fast forwarding to the bits he was in. Those were the days.

Tonight, Steve called him a low-rent Matt Dillon. He just doesn't understand. Man, my taste in men was weird when I was 12.

So, the movie... not the worst Stephen King adaptation, but not great, either. We realised last night that the problem is really the cheesiness of the kids and how it conflicts with Tim Matheson's ultra-serious performance. It's hard to balance the high-pitched laughing and dog howling of the deadly teens with Matheson's great drama. Still, it's a decent watch. King adaptations have been much worse.

It was a fun night of nostalgia, this one.

3/5

Sex and the City: The Movie, dir. Michael Patrick King (2008)

NIKKI says:
Okay, let me start by saying one thing:

Sarah Jessica Parker -- I think you're gorgeous.

There. That's out of the way. God, what is it with all the ugly-talk surrounding poor SJP? So she's not classically, wonderfully beautiful. Who cares? I don't even find her ugly. So her face is a bit long, I don't get why that's ugly? This movie only proved how brave a woman she is, getting "old" with style. When I watched her in Mexico, rip of those sunglasses, I wanted to cry -- not for Carrie's sake (as if she wasn't going to be happy in the end), but purely for the awesome girl-power fuck-you-ness of the scene. Yes, SJP seemed to be saying, I'm 43 -- so fucking what?

She's actually the reason I wasn't disturbed about seeing this film. I went on invitation from my co-worker, Steph. She's a huge fan of the TV show, and I'm sure would shop like the women in the movie if Video Ezy raised her salary by about four million dollars. Every other week she's got herself a new bag, new shoes, new wallet, new pants. It works out for me, because I've started to get all the cast-offs. And I hate buying wallets, shoes and handbags, so it's great.

I, of course, have no idea of anything that has gone on in this show since about episode four, when I tuned out. I don't remember actively turning away from the show, I just remember not really caring if I missed it. The only episodes I made sure to catch were those with Jon Bon Jovi and Timothy Olyphant. But I like SJP a lot, and was happy to watch her big movie.

And I actually liked it. It was smart, funny, emotional, and surprisingly well-written. It doesn't make me want to rush out and get the series on DVD, but if I had the time, I wouldn't say no to a marathon or two.

All the things I remember not liking about the show were present, too, though. I still don't like Samantha. I find her hopelessly sad. I also think Kim Cattrall is a terrible actress. I do think they did the only believable thing by breaking her and her boyfriend up. That seemed very silly. And I still hated Charlotte. She's just so dumb. Why are these women only stupid when it's necessary for a joke? She's really that ignorant about Mexico? Is she really that dumb? And I also don't think I'll ever get this obsession with material things these women have. It's so weird. I did find it hard to feel bad for Carrie with all that money at her disposal. Poor rich people, whatever will they do!?!

But I did like Carrie, and I thought Miranda was good. I didn't like that Miranda went back to her husband, but I don't know him very well, so I could be wrong on that. I also liked Jennifer Hudson thrown in there -- she's so beautiful. And her song at the end... I'm so getting this soundtrack. The version of "Auld Lang Syne" was amazing, too. And the Al Green song! I know someone who cried right then!

So, a success. Even for someone with no knowledge of anything about it.

3/5

Steve did not view.

Cassandra's Dream, dir. Woody Allen (2007)

NIKKI says:
Even with the standard credit sequence, the expert pacing, and the un-Hollywood ending, it just didn't feel like a Woody Allen film. The best Woody movies feature multifaceted characters; nuanced, intriguing, complex people. The main characters here couldn't have seemed more cardboard had the words "Corn Flakes" been printed on their foreheads.

Two working class English guys need money -- one has to pay off gambling debts, the other wants to move up and out of his small town and on to bigger things, with the girl of his dream on his arm -- and she's in dire need of impressing.

What do we do? We take a rich uncle's offer to help us out of our scrapes by killing someone.

It's been done, right? And this one re-did it without any Woody Allen wit, no subtext whatsoever, and very little in the way of punch. It was all very predictable. From the second one character references Bonnie and Clyde, I knew the fates of our heroes. And while I was impressed with the ending, I didn't feel at all satisfied. And so... I kinda felt. Now what? Also, the uncle character was foreshadowed to death as not the man we might think he is. Over-development is very un-Woody.

I don't know quite what I think about Woody's new career as a maker of British caper flicks. I didn't care for Match Point and Scoop, while fun, was nowhere near the Woody Allen standard I am so used to. Where did our Woody go? His dialogue has lost its snap, his characters have lost their individuality and realism, and his plots have lost their ferocity and their absurdity. Is Woody Allen so purely an American writer that his British works can't help but feel inferior?

I agree with many of the film's reviews that the actors were very good. I've never liked Colin Farrell in anything before this. For the first time, I saw him as a real actor. He is actually the most compelling thing about this film. Still, his character is riddled with cliches.

I don't know -- even bad Woody Allen is still pretty good, but I want more. Anyone could have made this movie, not the single greatest writer/director in the history of cinema.

2.5/5

The Lonely Guy, dir. Arthur Hiller (1984)

NIKKI says:
"I remember after I saw Rocky, I ran out in the park jogging, shadow boxing. Some guy came up to me and punched me right in the face."

I think that's all I need to say.

... but I'll go on. I watched this movie because a friend of mine loves it. It's as ridiculous now as it was when I first watched it over 10 years ago. Still absurd, still weird, still hilarious. I love Steve Martin.

"Hey Warren! Does The Lonely Guy's store have Gene Hackman? "

3/5

STEVE says:
I remembered this movie being pretty fairly savaged by the critics when it came out, which is one of the reasons I stayed away from it for so long. Turns out - as it usually does in cases like this - that it was no where near as bad as the reviews had me believe, but it wasn't one of those great, misunderstood comedies that gets recognized years later for its brilliance, either.

Steve Martin was very funny, as was Charles Grodin as his Lonely Guy mentor, and their scenes together, quite possibly ad-libbed, were some of the funniest in the movie. But it felt to me that maybe Arthur Hiller wasn't the guy to be directing this. Martin's character reminded me of his Navin Johnson from The Jerk - just as naive, but nowhere near as stupid - and I think the movie might have done better under the hand of Carl Reiner. It was a lot of the same brand of comedy, but guided by someone not as familiar with the rhythm.

2.5/5

Convoy dir. Sam Peckinpah (1978)

STEVE says:
I have to admit, we turned The Wild Bunch off after what felt like the first six hours, but after Convoy, I'm thinking of revisiting it.

I love Straw Dogs, I think Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia is a bit of genius, and Convoy - which I expected to be no more than a 90 minute chase scene - turned out to be kind of, well, fun, and rather highly politically motivated, which came as a surprise as well. I look at The Wild Bunch and I think, "Hey, maybe it was me." There's a reason it's so revered, right? I mean, where would we be without the slow-mo operatic violence of Sam Peckinpah?

Overall, Convoy wasn't bad, but it wasn't great, either. Fun, enjoyable, but not necessarily a classic the caliber of the others. Worth noting, though, is the fact that this is the first movie we've watched that's based on a song. So it gets an extra half-point for that distinction.

2/5

NIKKI says:
You just watch movies like this thinking about how it's never going to be this way again. They just do not make movies like this anymore. Or like Smokey and the Bandit or White Lightning or Cannonball Run or like anything Burt Reynolds was ever in driving a car.

This is a love story about trucks, and at one point, there's even a scene which feels like truck-porn. It fades in and out on the trucks while some sort of classical music piece plays. Like the trucks are doing ballet. The ballet-dancers of the road. It's very strange. And there are broads who fuck in truck cabins and tubby sheriffs who just want to get that Rubber Duck varmint.

The social and political undertones were good -- probably adding smarts to this one that perhaps Smokey lacked. Still, the bar brawl scene is way overdone, and I still don't really know if I liked any of the main characters. But that's this kind of movie, I guess. It's about egos and dignity, broads and short dresses, life on the road in the '70s.

Can someone make me a Wayback Machine?

3/5

Killing Words (aka. Palabras encadenadas), dir. Laura Mañá (2002)

NIKKI says:
Steve might be right -- maybe it is time for a foreign films extravaganza at our place? We're just enjoying them so much lately. I'd forgotten all about this one. We got it from BigPond Movies ages ago. It was so long ago now, that I thought it was a documentary about speech or bullying or something.

How wrong I was. This is a movie about a guy who kidnaps a woman and ties her to a chair. He plays her a videotape of him confessing to several murders of women and children (and taxi drivers, we learn later). Then he challenges her to word game called Word Chains, in which one person says a word and the other person must say a word that starts with the last syllable of the previous word. If she loses, he tells her, he will pluck out her eye.

Then the movie cuts forward in time, to the guy in an interrogation room, and every development you've just seen shifts a little bit out of place, and the film becomes something much more interesting than your basic killer-and-his-prey scenario.

The twists and turns are all really well done. Like 13 Tzameti, this is not a movie that wants to explain everything. It often lets you come to its conclusions rather than handing them to you. You have to do a little work, I guess. And it's exciting, brain-tingling work -- you're all, so he, but she, who's that, what's this... I love movies that turn your brain upside down, that challenge you, that tell stories in non-standard ways.

This is a great film. The direction was good, the acting was absolutely chilling, and the story was intriguing and new. We had a slight issue with the ending, it probably went on five minutes longer than it needed to, but that's not so bad.

3.5/5

STEVE says:
As with 13 Tzameti, the less said about this one, the better. I'll leave it at that, and let my rating speak for itself.

3.5/5

Xtro, dir. Harry Bromley Davenport (1983)

NIKKI says:
I'll admit -- I was pumped. It's been a long time since I've seen that horrible alien face, the face that used to taunt me at the video shop, daring me to take it home and face its evil evilness! Eventually, after I'd watched everything else on the Magnum Video horror shelf, I went for it. I needed mum, though, as it was R-rated, and I was still in primary school (...I know, but things were different then).

So, yeah, it did freak me out. It freaked me out even more watching it last night that I remember so little of it. I remember the birthing scene and the bleeding ears, but not G.I. Joe coming to life and murdering the old lady next door. Or the clown or the spinning top, or the bathtub full of Xtro pods.

My main memory of this is just that awful backwards-body man crawling in the swampy leaves with Xtro's FACE! Ugh.

We discussed the movie, though, prior to watching it, that even if it was bad, it was still deserving of our attention because it has its place in the evolution of horror in the 1980s. What that place signifies, exactly, I'm not so sure. I think it was one of the first movies I remember to take the notion of the scary little beast and make him so cruelly awful -- perhaps a precursor to Bilal in Basket Case, or those ridiculously disgusting slobbies from Society?

It could just be that Xtro exists as the Anti-ET. The video packet, Steve tells me, contained a line about not all aliens being cute and cuddly. Too right.

I think, too, I noticed a subtext about boys going through puberty without their fathers. There's much here in the way of sexual themes and allusions -- the father being reborn, the kid getting mysteriously covered in "sticky stuff" at night, the kid 'walking in' on his mum with her new man, the fact that the kid has a SNAKE as a PET. Okay, maybe that's going too far, but I'm fairly convinced this is a child's coming of age tale in an era of sky-rocketing divorce rates. And that's all any good horror movie needs -- subtext and scary monster.

It was still lame.

1/5

STEVE says:
Okay, new rule: From now on, if a movie has been released in my lifetime and I haven't seen it, let's take it as read that there's a good reason I haven't seen it and just move on.

Xtro had some very good, very wet special effects sequences, an interesting story with a promising subtext, a nude d'Abo and not much after that. Seriously, once the midget clown turned up, I tuned out.

Again, it took me 25 years to watch this and it turned out to be shite. That's a hell of a build up for such a resoundingly bad movie, and I can't help thinking that I'd have been less disappointed if I'd seen it when I was 12.

1/5

13 Tzameti, dir. Géla Babluani (2005)

NIKKI says:
And the preview tapes come through once again... Here's a movie we'd never otherwise get to see. A French film from 2005 that appears to be getting a little DVD exposure in Australia. It's such a small release (and foreign and black and white -- all the killers) that my video shop won't get it. And neither will most others around me. So, without the preview tape, a movie like this would just pass us by. Ugh, think of the ones that must have done so in the past? How horrifying.

Anyway, 13 Tzameti... it's impossible to reveal anything that goes on here without utterly ruining it. We knew very little -- just that a man assumes the identity of another man in order to possibly gain a lot of money. How, what, where, and why is the crux of this. The 'how' part of that scenario, when we learn as the guy does, just what's going on is probably one the tensest moments I've spent ever when watching a movie. Lots of "oh my god"s and "no fucking ways"s. It's not that the 'how' is all that out-there in a conceptual sense -- this isn't Hostel -- but our young, naive hero in this place with these people who appear otherwise sane -- what is this all about?!?!

And the great thing about this film is that it chooses not to reveal everything. We leave still wondering what and why and who, but we don't question that so much because the experience we've just had has been and fascinating and shocking, cruel and brilliant. One tiny thing lets it down at the end -- but I'm looking into the reasons behind it. If I can find an explanation that satisfies me, I may have to lift my rating a full point.

Great, great movie. Apparently Brad Pitt holds remake rights.

3.5/5

STEVE says:
Oh my everloving Christ!

4/5

Psycho IV: The Beginning, dir. Mick Garris (1990)

NIKKI says:
And then it all just goes so horribly lame. CCH Pounder sitting in a radio booth, smoking, acting all high and mighty, spouting nonsense about matricide and boys gone wild. This is a Psycho sequel? Apparently.

The main gimmick here is the flashback to Young Norman, played awesomely by Henry Thomas, to detail just how Norman went a little mad. It's all so standard, though. Think of the absolute to-the-letter textbook case for someone of Norman's particular issue and you'll no doubt pick the problems outlined here. Let's just say, at one point, Norman gets an erection while hugging his mother in bed. And, at another point, she makes him wear a dress. Really? Could you make it any more obvious?

BORING. Were there no creative people in the room when discussing the plot for this movie? But wait, it's written by Joe Stefano, who scripted the first one. Dude, what happened in 30 years that you became so unimaginative, boring, and by-the-numbers? Oh wait -- they gave this to Mick Garris to direct. That makes me think Stefano wrote a masterpiece. Give Garris a script, you know, and it's like in The Simpsons when the tractor keeps falling on Homer. He fiddles with it, it falls on him. He walks by it, it falls on him. He does nothing at all, the tractor still falls on him.

Give Mick Garris a screenplay and a tractor will fall on him.

This is just terrible. Badly acted, badly directed (Garris tries to be Jonathan Demme and fails), with a script so hopelessly stupid and banal that even Anthony Perkins and his giggly weirdness can't save it.

Top 5 Reasons To Make Me Think 'Joe Stefano' is a pseudonym for 'Mick Garris':
1. "You've got a tongue like an elephant's memory."
2. "You see Norman, it's not polite to be naked around a lady unless you're having sex with her."
3. "You will stay locked in there until you learn not to say "no" to your mother when she tells you you're a girl!"
4. "Just me and my trusty umbrella. "
5. "They're closing down the highway and building a new one. They couldn't build it closer to the motel because then the world could still see us! Oh, what am I going to do! How am I going to live! You! Just like my father -- never a drop of sympathy! It's because of you that I can't hold my water!"

1/5

The Dead Zone, dir. David Cronenberg (1983)

The Rachel Papers, dir. Damian Harris (1989)

Psycho III, dir. Anthony Perkins (1986)

NIKKI says:
I had it in my mind that this, too, was a decent Psycho sequel. It's really not. I like the whole thing at the end with his "finally free" of mother, having stabbed her skeleton to pieces. But the rest of the movie suffers from the same over-plotting as the previous sequel. There's just too much going on. Norman often gets lost in these movies as they build plot around him. I don't know, it just didn't work for me.

It starts with the nun, Maureen, leaving the church after accidentally killing another nun. (I'm convinced Diana Scarwid is playing her character from Rumble Fish -- cleaned up, into the nunnery, and then... oops). She wanders away, meets smarmy dolt Jeff Fahey (his Nikki's-Older-Man-Eye-Candy appeal drops a bit here because his character is such a wanker), he sexually assaults her by way of a come on and all goes downhill from there.

Norman takes her in, and lets Jeff work at the motel even though he appears as trustworthy as a talking mouse wearing peak-cap and an eye-patch. He turns the motel into his own little party-brothel and picks up skanks that end up dead. Blah, blah. Maureen falls in love with Norman, who is still haunted by his mother, whose body is now that of the dead Mrs. Spool from the first sequel. But she's not really his mother, but that's okay.

And there's reporter in there working on a story about recidivism, and killers back on the street, and she gets involved, and I believe there's even an allusion to the fact that she might be behind the murders to prove her point that Norman can't be trusted. I don't know, the nunnery, Fahey, the reporter, the Mrs Spool thing... life is never simple for Norman.

I didn't hate this, but I didn't much care for it. I must have felt that last time we watched it back in 2003, because I have no recollection of having seen it so recently.

2/5

Psycho II, dir. Richard Franklin (1983)

NIKKI says:
Apparently we did a Psycho-thon back in 2003, but I can't remember it. Bits and pieces of this one float around in my memory -- Dennis Franz, the new mother at the end, the draining of the swamp -- but much of it I have no recollection of. Especially the return of Vera Miles. Maybe I just blocked it...?

It's not a bad film, by any means. Anthony Perkins is far too enjoyable for that to happen. And it's directed by Richard Franklin of Road Games, so there's a few bonus points right there. The film's issue has to do with one plot element that just shouldn't be there. Remove everything associated with that plot element and you have a taught, interesting little film about rehabilitation and fear, paranoia and delusion.

So, I choose to look at the movie without the New Mother, and her killing spree. It's a bit tragic the makers didn't see the issue and fix it all up. They just didn't need the murders, and the red herrings, and the guessing game. The story about a reformed Norman and what makes him mad again, and these people trying to drive him made but realising that perhaps he's not. Now, that's a good Psycho story.

Still, this one has some great moments. Anthony Perkins and Meg Tilly are great together, and there are lots of references to the original film. Of course, Norman becomes a bit of a Horror Hero at the end, and I feel like we are supposed to applaud his return to violence. I don't know if I like that too much, but it was the '80s I guess.

On to #3...

2.5/5

Psycho, dir. Alfred Hitchcock (1960)

NIKKI says:
What can you say, really? It's a classic. It's still as good now as it ever was. Still superbly written and directed, and Anthony Perkins is still the most frightening killer in film history. And, that bit in the show scene, when she reaches her arm out and pulls the curtains off the railing then just thunks on the ground is still one of the most disturbing thing ever on film. I don't care so much for the "reep! reep! reep!" knife part -- the end of that scene is the shocking bit.

The first time I watched this movie was in my living room, back in the days of one TV and one VCR per household. The Dark Ages. I remember mum and dad were wandering in and out, and I felt a bit cool that I was watching a classic, and a black and white one at that. Mum told me about when she first saw the movie in the cinema, and how she was convinced the blood in the shower scene was red. Dad told me about seeing it, and as usual, remembered the details surprisingly well after about 40 years. Probably not the best atmosphere for the movie, but I remember that day really vividly. It was good.

The movie holds up, anyway. I could watch it more often than we do.

5/5