Cynical Cinema

I couldn’t believe it. I had a giant box full of DVDs, and I was handing them out to the first 50 people who came to the Operation Go Home Ghostbusters event last night. And I was letting people pick and choose their own movies as they went through the box. I had a ton of films from Paramount, Peace Arch, First Run, and Alliance that I had requested because they were my favourite DVD releases of the year. And then I had about six really crappy TV series to make sure I made it to 50. An elderly lady came to look through my box, and she warned me ahead of time that I was dealing with someone who really, really knew her movies. Then she asked me what No Country For Old Men was about. She wasn’t familiar with Sunset Boulevard or Sabrina or Roman Holiday. In her defense, she was very, very familiar with Ghostbusters. And, I’m sure, Star Wars and Back To The Future.

Here’s the part I couldn’t believe. A young girl, probably about 16 years old, gravitated instantly to the box set of Season One of A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila. She went on and on and gushed about the show, and how totallyawesome Tila Tequila really was, while I looked at her in dumbfounded amazement. And then, she threw the Tila Tequila DVD back in the box. She had spotted something EVEN MORE totallyawesome. The three-disc box set of El Cid, the 1961 epic film starring Charlton Heston and Sophia Loren. And believe me when I say I’m not making this up - she says “oh, I love Anthony Mann!” and chooses El Cid over A Shot At Love With Tila Tequila. This little exchange made my whole day. And, in some way, ruined my whole life.

In the end, I would guess that we got a little more than a hundred people to come see Ghostbusters at the Bytowne last night, which should be a nice boost for Operation Go Home. The DVDs went over well - the few people who didn’t know it was going on were rather flabbergasted - “are you serious? I can just take one? Free?” And then they picked up No Country For Old Men or In Bruges and went home happy. Toward the end, people picked up Caroline in the City. And went home less happy. I think that good money was raised last night, and I will hopefully have a total by Monday.  Big thanks, also, to Paramount Home Entertainment and Peace Arch Entertainment, both of whom provided some excellent DVDs for the giveaway.

The Incredible Hulk was the third-best comic book adaptation of the past summer.  Considering, however, that the other two were Iron Man and The Dark Knight, that’s some pretty good company.  And it appears that if you’ve seen Iron Man, then you definitely have to see The Incredible Hulk.  And vice versa.  Not only are both of them terrific movies, but a tiny cameo appearance at the end of this film indicates that there will be some kind of cross-over between the two at a later date.  And that crossover is certainly something that I want to see. 

The main reason these movies are great are the actors.  Robert Downey Jr. is magnificent as Iron Man, and Edward Norton is just as good as The Incredible Hulk.  Where normally film studios making superhero movies are looking for guys with chiseled bodies and chiseled faces and “the look”, rather than people who can really act.  So we get Brandon Routh playing Superman.  Which is fine, but the added element of serious acting provided by Edward Norton as Bruce Banner in The Incredible Hulk creates a far more compelling movie overall. 

That being said, the other serious actors in this movie are underused.  Willima Hurt, one of the world’s great actors, plays Banner’s nemesis, General Thaddeus Ross, who wants to capture Banner to harness the power of the Hulk into a weapon.  He is cartoonish, which one would expect from a comic book movie, but I was hoping for something more.  Norton’s character isn’t a cartoon, why should Ross be one?  Same goes for Liv Tyler, who plays Banner’s obligatory love interest, and yet she serves the comic book movie cliched purpose of being in distress and getting rescued, and then complaining to her father (General Ross) about his treatment of her boyfriend.  Basically, her sole purpose in the movie is to get hurt or attacked, an event which inevitably leads to more rage in the Hulk, which allows him to become more powerful.  And that’s about it.

Tim Roth is fantastic as the really bad guy, Emil Blonsky, a commando from Russia and Britain (mostly Britain…I think).  He is so impressed with the power of the Hulk that he wants the same thing for himself, and this leads to a showdown at the end of the film between two massive behemoths in New York City.  It’s always New York City when two massive creatures have a battle to the death.  Well, New York City or Tokyo.  In this case, we don’t see any people die, or at least, we’re not certain they are dead.  But with the crazy mayhem of wreckage that exists at the end of this scene, we can only assume that hundreds of innocent people have lost their lives.  At the very least, hundreds of people lost their cars.

The Incredible Hulk works because of Norton.  The special effects are pretty good, although there are some moments where we are acutely aware that we are watching computer-generated monsters fighting.  The story movies along quickly, but for the most part it is a chase movie.  The government agents try to track down Bruce Banner, but he turns into the Hulk before they can capture him, and he wrecks a bunch of stuff and runs off, only to be tracked down again, and the whole process is repeated.  There is a love interest who exists mostly to help make him angry.  And the bad guys exist mostly to be cartoon-bad-guys, so evil that they make the Hulk seem like the good guy in comparison.

With all this going on, it would have been very easy for this movie to sink to the level of the standard, average, by-the-numbers comic book adaptation.  But it’s Norton who gives the movie it’s heart and soul, something it desperately needs.  When the movie opens, he’s a tortured man working at a soda-bottling plant in Brazil, trying desperately to keep his emotions under control.  Even when a situation calls for anger, he can’t allow himself to become excited in any way.  He wears a heart monitor to make sure that nothing goes awry, and the conflict within him is apparent.  This also leads to the best line in the movie.  In Brazil, the film is subtitled, and Banner’s Spanish isn’t exactly top-notch.  He says “don’t make me…hungry.  You wouldn’t like me when I’m…hungry.”  One of the two lines we expect in the movie - the other, “Hulk Smash!” plays out at the end.  Bases covered!

On the Blu-Ray DVD I have, there are dozens of special features, some of which are worthwhile and some of which are not.  The most interesting of these special features is an “alternate opening”, which I think would have worked better than the one they used.  Bruce Banner is running across the deserted wasteland of either Antarctica or the Arctic, having just wreaked havoc in his personal life, and seen the Hulk appear in himself for the first time.  It is incredibly poignant, as it parallels almost exactly the final scenes in Mary Shelley’s Frankenstein book, where Frankenstein’s monster is running off, by himself, over the ice in the Arctic.  It sets up the movie perfectly, worldlessly conveying the conflict in Banner’s tortured soul.  He can’t help what he is, but he can’t live with it either.

At the very end of The Incredible Hulk, we get a cameo appearance from another major star, one which indicates that there will be a crossover movie in the coming years between The Incredible Hulk and Iron Man and perhaps some other, as-yet-unreleased movies.  And even though I’m generally not a comic book guy, this is about the most exciting news I can imagine.  Watch these movies.  Buy Iron Man, and at the very least rent The Incredible Hulk.  Then you, too, will be prepared for the upcoming awesome.

I picked up The 4400, The Complete Series, out Tuesday the 28th from Paramount Home Entertainment.  And I started watching it.  And then I kept watching.  I stopped taking notes because it was interfering with my viewing of this show.  And I started to pay really, really close attention.  I got through Season One, and went to bed.  The next morning, as soon as I got up, I started Season Two.  By the time I went to bed that night, I had begun Season Three.  I woke up early the following day to complete Season Three.  And then, a couple of days later, I had watched the Fourth and Final season.  This was actually the second time I had watched Season Four of The 4400.  I watched it alone in May, when that season came out on DVD, and I gave it four stars out of ten.  I stand by that review.  As a stand-alone DVD set, Season Four merits four stars.

But now I was addicted.  I was desperate to find out what happened.  I had to know how this series ended.  And I watched all four seasons of this show.  I should have known.  After all, I had already watched the fourth season.  The fourth, and final, season.  And I remember how that one ended.  In that, it didn’t.  It didn’t end at all.  It didn’t answer any questions at all.  It just got cancelled and taken off the air.  I just watched thirty-three hours of this show.  Thirty-three.  Hours.  And at the end…nothing.  I was a little peeved.  But that was nothing compared to the fury of my girlfriend, who had watched all thirty-three hours with me.  She was incensed.  She had just wasted an entire weekend, and 33 hours of her life.

Here’s the basic premise:  Over the past 50 years, people have been abducted from all over the world.  All of a sudden, 4400 people are returned to Earth, all at once, all in one place, without having aged a day.  Each of the 4400 has a special ability - telekinesis, the ability to heal others, pre-cognition, and so forth.  The government gets involved, and tries to suppress these abilities.  We find out pretty quickly that these are not alien abductions, but rather these people are being taken by humans in the future, who are sending them back to hopefully change the course of history and save all of humanity.  And after a while, it looks like a war is brewing.

Then it ends.  It’s over.  If you’re the creator of The 4400, and you want to sell your “complete series” DVD, it seems like it would have been a fairly easy thing to do to film maybe five or six more episodes in order to wrap it up and give the viewers some closure.  The people who had invested in this series and who would purchase a 15-disc set to find out how it actually ends.  In fact, you could well market it to people who had never seen this show before as well.  Because this show was good.  It was VERY good.  Incredibly compelling, like the beginning of Lost.  And watching the first season made me absolutely rabid to find out the secrets and the stories and the result of the whole process.  In fact, you could maybe have created a satisfactory conclusion by filming TWO more episodes.  So why not?

Instead, this is what we get - a fifteenth disc that is full of special features, once the fourth season ends.  One of those special features is an introduction by Scott Peters, the creator of the show.  He talks about creating the show, and how pleased he is with the ardent fans who posted on the internet message boards and discussed the show and so forth.  Which is fine.  By all means, thank the fans!  But…then what?  You must have had some idea how the series was going to end - just tell us what the plan was!  It’s too late to do it now, just tell us the end.  It is no longer a spoiler, it is now the only catharsis available to us, the audience.  Help us out here.

The fact is, I felt incredibly ripped off after 33 hours of watching this with no resolution whatsoever.  Why bother with this, I thought.  In fact, thanks to the wrath of my girlfriend, I was ready to give this show a one-star rating.  After all, I was sour too because she woke me up in the middle of the night to express her anger - she had stayed up four hours later than normal to get to the end, because she too was addicted.  But I reconsidered, because if this show was compelling enough to make us that passionate about seeing an ending, it must have been doing something right.  And the show itself deserves at least nine stars.  But I will not give it nine, because it is false advertising.  The 4400 Complete Series is some great television, but there is nothing “complete” about this series.

Pick of the week:  Hell Ride (7/10):  Bonkers, violent, inane and totally fun.  Quentin Tarantino and Larry Bishop do a tribute to the biker B-movies of the 60s and 70s.  Worth it for Michael Madsen, Dennis Hopper, Leonor Varela.
Download Hell Ride

TV pick of the week:  The 4400, Complete Series (8/10):  Pick it up only if you can handle massive amounts of disappointment.  The “Complete Series” is a misnomer, because this series was never completed - so it ends badly for anyone who has invested 33 hours into it.  Like me.  But the series itself is addictive and compelling.
Download The 4400 Complete Series

Journey To the Center of the Earth 3-D (2/10):  The kids may love it, and it does come with 3-D glasses for some cool effects.  But the story and the acting is so painful that it really can’t be worthwhile for anyone else.
Download Journey to the Center of the Earth

Tinker Bell:  Disney’s cartoon spin-off of Peter Pan?  I guess.  This film explores the mysteries of the world, like how “nature gets her glow”, and why seasons change.  And then credits it all to Tinker Bell the fairy.  Whee.

The L Word, Complete Fourth and Fifth Seasons (6/10):  It’s full of women talking woman-talk, no real social commentary, and some irritating characters.  But boy, does it have a lot of naked hot-chick lesbian sex.
Download The L Word Season Five

Houdini’s Death-Defying Acts:  Catherine Zeta-Jones stars as a woman.  Guy Pearce stars as Houdini.  Houdini is an international superstar at the time (1926), but he wants to hide from the public while he searches for contact with his dead mother.  Zeta-Jones seems to be a psychic who can give him that contact.  Could be OK.

Carlos Mencia:  Performance Enhanced (3/10):  I’m sorry, fans.  Carlos Mencia is not funny.  Just making racist jokes and insisting they are not racist doesn’t push boundaries or shock anyone any more.  And it isn’t funny.

Zombie Strippers:  Am I a total loser for looking forward to this?  Probably.  Jenna Jameson (Deep Inside Celeste) and Robert Englund (Nightmare On Elm Street) star with some other porn stars in a movie about strippers who can’t decide whether they want to become zombies or not.  It could well be one of the worst movies ever, and I’m excited for that.

Girlfriends, Season Five (3/10):  Four irritating, terribly self-centred women fight with each other, are terrible friends to each other, and generally suck through a season of a sit-com.  Laugh track ensues.  Laughter does not.
Download Girlfriends, Season Five

Beaufort:  Could be interesting.  Foreign film about a military outpost in the months before Israel pulled out of Lebanon.  A 22-year-old outpost commander tries to keep his troops together.

Sister Sister Season One (3/10):  They’re long lost twins.  And they both…love shopping!  Oh my god, get it?  They both…drink their milk with their left hands!  Get it?  And they both…annoy me totally.  Get it?
Download Sister Sister Season One

Dead Space:  Downfall:  The best thing one can say about a movie adaptation of a video game is that it is not directed by Uwe Boll.  This one is not directed by Uwe Boll.  It’s one of them adult-animation dealies.

Also out:

Feast II:  Sloppy Seconds
Trailer Park of Terror
Lone Rider

Next week:

Get Smart
Transsiberian
Shrek The Halls
Kung Fu Panda
Kit Kittredge:  American Girl
When Did You Last See Your Father?
Termination Point
Flashbacks of a Fool
Futurama:  Bender’s Game
Barbie In A Christmas Carol
Blue Elephant
Chill
Batman:  The Complete Animated Series
Christmas Is Here Again
Confessions of a Pit Fighter
The Hive
Dora The Explorer:  Singing Sensation!
Moscow Zero
Maman Est Chez Le Coiffeur
Le Piege Americain
The Rebel
Slacker Uprising
Waterworld
Secrets of the Furious Five
Sunday School Musical
Elmo’s Christmas Countdown
JAG Seventh Season
Wild Wild West Complete Series

Call me jaded. I probably am. But most of the time, I have a very easy time suspending my disbelief when movies get into out-of-this-world, totally-impossible territory. But it’s up to the movie to pull you in. And if you’re going to make, say, Spy Kids, you need to make this otherwordly scene so entertaining and captivating that people forget easily how implausible it is. Journey To The Center of the Earth is not one of those movies. I mean, if you’re going to create a world, at the center of the Earth, and have glow-in-the-dark birds and tyrannosaurs and gigantic sea monsters inhabit that world, that’s fine. But you must, in doing so, acknowledge that this is all scientifically impossible. I mean, the falling six thousand, four hundred kilometres to the center of the earth and surviving. The idea that being at the centre of the earth would not, in itself, kill you. And the idea that you could survive the trip back to the surface riding on a geyser. All of this is, I think we can all agree, scientifically impossible.

And that’s fine. Movies do not have to make scientific sense, or even attempt to be plausible. They are made for kids. And kids watch Space Chimps. But here’s the thing - if you’re the one making this film, you NEED to, at the very least, acknowledge that you are making something far, far outside the realm of realistic science. And in order to make that acknowledgement, ALL you have to do - ALL - is not call attention to it. Like, make your protagonist a kid, who falls down a really, really deep six thousand kilometre hole, into the centre of the Earth, and lands on…I don’t know…a marshmallow tree, and somehow survives. And then there is this massive world. That would be really, really easy to do.

The thing NOT to do is to make your protagonist a scientist. Or Brendan Fraser. In this case, Journey To The Center Of The Earth has made both mistakes at once. The protagonist IS Brendan Fraser. Playing a scientist. Who is constantly figuring out scientific things. Like, the walls are made of magnesium, and if you light magnesium with a match, it burns. This could come in handy. The geothermal winds are more powerful and strong than the surface winds, so we need to put our boat-kite way up in the air. The ground is made of tungsten calcite, and therefore is in imminent danger of collapsing. (I’m making up most of these words. I don’t remember the movie well enough and I don’t care enough about it to look them up.)

But the point I’m making is that if you’re going to make one of your characters a genius, you can only do so if your movie is also going to be smart. And if you are going to make one of your characters a scientist, your movie should at the very least be scientifically plausible. Make Brendan Fraser a crane operator, or a Wendy’s manager, and I would have much, much less of a problem with this movie.

Now, I must give the DVD some credit here - it comes with 3-D glasses, so if you wish you can put on those glasses and watch this movie in 3-D.  And some of that is pretty cool.  But even if those special effects were the greatest in movie history, I wouldn’t be willing to sit through this story, this script and this acting in order to find out. Skip this one, either way. Journey To The Centre of the Earth comes out October 28th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

Alliance Films is releasing Hell Ride on October 28th, and I really had no idea what to make of this movie. It’s a campy biker movie in the style of the silly B-movies of the 60s and 70s. It makes little sense, it’s gruesome and violent, the characters are weird and badly drawn, the dialogue is cheesy and silly, and yet…I really enjoyed it. Part of it is the actors. Michael Madsen plays a gunfighter named “The Gent”. He’s a biker who wears frilly shirts and cracks jokes. Most of the fun lines in the movie belong to Madsen and Dennis Hopper, who is totally in his element as a half way crazy old biker named “Eddie Zero” who may still be the toughest guy around. It’s a cross between his role in Easy Rider and his unforgettable scene with Christopher Walken in True Romance.

The genesis of Hell Ride was a day when Tarantino had Larry Bishop over to his house to watch a print of The Savage Seven, a violent biker B-movie from 1968.  They realized that there hadn’t been a real biker movie in decades.  Which maybe was a good thing.  But the next thing they did was to create Hell Ride, a genuine biker B-movie directed by Bishop and produced by Tarantino.  It was to be (and certainly is) a throwback, a tribute to the silly yet entertaining biker movies of the 60s and 70s.  Like Hells Angels On Wheels, or Angel Unchained.

Joining Madsen in the cast are two other alumni of Tarantino’s Kill Bill. Larry Bishop plays “Pistolero”, the leader of the Victors motorcycle gang. And David Carradine shows up for a memorable scene as “The Deuce”, a character who is never fully explained but who gets his anyway. Eric Balfour from 24 plays “Comanche”, and Vinnie Jones is terrific as “Billy Wings”, the leader of the bad-guy biker gang. The basic plot (in as much as there is one) of the film revolves around Pistolero, Comanche and The Gent trying to retrieve a safety deposit box from Billy Wings to make good on a promise that Pistolero made to a woman many years ago. This leads to a biker war, complete with gunfights, beheadings, torture, brutal murders, a few slit throats and several people set on fire. Oh, and also strippers, boobs, and one of the most awkward, uncomfortable and unsexy attempts at being sexy by Leonor Varela, one of the hottest women in the world. Her strip-tease moment on a pool table must be seen to be believed. It is absolutely hilarious. I’m not really sure whether it was supposed to be.

The best thing about Hell Ride, however, is the dialogue. Here is an example of the type of dialogue contained in this bonkers screenplay, to the best of my recollection:

“That’s none of your business.”
“I’m making it my business.”
“It’s my business to make sure it doesn’t become your business.”
“Who entrusted you with that?”
“That’s my business.”
“OK. Let’s get down to business.”

Seriously, that is what a large portion of this movie sounds like. Then there’s a long exchange between Varela and Bishop about firemen and putting out fires and fire retardant materials and fireproof materials and fighting fire with fire. It is absolutely bonkers, it is terrible dialogue, but it is idiotic on purpose. These characters think they are being totally badass and clever by saying these things, but we, the audience, understand that this is some pretty stupid stuff to be saying. And it just adds to the wonderfully campy feel of the movie. And that is just what Hell Ride is. Wonderfully campy nonsense. Bloody, violent, badass nonsense. And it’s totally enjoyable.

Paramount Home Entertainment just sent me all five DVD seasons of The L Word. Five seasons. Of hot lesbians having hot lesbian sex. And something else too. Plot maybe? Dialogue? I don’t really remember. I remember Mia Kirshner, and Jennifer Beals, and Katherine Moennig, Leisha Hailey, Karina Lombard, Marlee Matlin, Annabella Sciorra and Kristanna Loken. And all the other gorgeous women who get naked and have sex with each other. The actual story arc of the first five seasons escapes me. And I get it. This series was created to appeal to the largest possible audience. Lesbian women who like lesbians, straight women who like soap opera drama and girl talk, gay men who like TV about gay culture, and straight men who like watching naked lesbians. But I feel as though a substantial amount of potential for the series is sacrificed in favour of showing incredibly hot naked women sleeping together.

The story arcs I would have liked to see a little more developed are those that deal with the discrimination faced by gay people. In the fifth season, which is being released October 28th by Paramount, there are a few moments that deal with this. There is a character, Tasha, who is being outed as a lesbian and being kicked out of the military. There is another character who reacts to homophobic statements made by a basketball player by outing him as a homosexual. But there is not enough of this stuff, which I find compelling. The rest of the series, and the season, involves lesbian women living in their own, seemingly exclusive, lesbian world, where there are no ugly lesbians, very few butch ones, and virtually no straight people at all. Now, I know a lot of lesbians, and they are, proportionately, about the same as the rest of the world. In that ten percent of them are hot, twenty percent are ugly, and seventy percent are somewhere in the middle.

So to create a world of lesbians in which only the hottest of the hot is one of two things. Either it’s pandering to the heterosexual males who enjoy watching lesbian sex, or it’s just television, where only hot people get roles. Breaking this mold, at least a little, are Cybill Shepherd and Pam Grier, who are not exactly ugly, but they are in their late fifties.

The fifth season is similar to the other four, in that there are soap opera-style relationship troubles, and a lot of hot naked women having sex. In this imaginary lesbian world, it seems that everyone is willing to have sex with just about anyone else. Which means that if you have watched the entire five seasons, you are have seen almost every character on the show hook up with almost every other character, at one point or another. Just about every fantasy men have about two women together is played out, including VIP room threesomes, “promiscuous, debauched lesbians” (in the words of Cybill Shepherd) and even prison sex. Mia Kirschner (Jenny) is still the hottest girl on the show, but now she is also the most irritating. She has written a book, and it’s being made into a movie, and Jenny is the director. She becomes self-involved, and cartoonish with her Hollywood giant ego. Every time she’s on the screen in this season, she isn’t acting so much as purposely setting out to irritate the viewers.

And so, it all comes back to the hot chicks who get naked and sleep with each other. In this season, there are some new ones joining the cast. Elizabeth Keener, as the owner of a new lesbian bar in town, and Alicia Leigh Willis, a gorgeous actress who plays Keener’s lover. The best scenes are between Kirschner and Kate French, who plays the star actress in Jenny’s movie, including a truly bonkers oil wrestling match. There is a heated rivalry between Pam Grier’s bar and the one owned by Keener. The movie becomes a big central part of the season as well. Other than that, I can’t remember if anything else happened. There was too much lesbian sex going on.

Carlos Mencia is just not that funny. I tried to like him through his entire stand-up performance Carlos Mencia: Performance Enhanced, out October 28th from Paramount Home Entertainment. I really tried. But this man does not make me laugh. At all. I believe I laughed once through his entire performance. And I know that he tries to make people either laugh or cringe, but I didn’t cringe either. I just sat there, bored out of my mind, for sixty-six minutes. Mencia’s style of comedy is the kind that pushes boundaries, makes people squirm, and offends people. He makes fun of every race, and people laugh, and he says the N-word, and people laugh, and that’s about it.

He seems to think he’s redeeming himself when he breaks out of the stand-up routine to say something nice and intense about the soldiers in Iraq. But he isn’t. It comes off as platitudes that he spouts because the nice stuff then gives him license to offend everyone on the planet. But it isn’t nice stuff. It’s bland, obvious stuff. And the offensive stuff isn’t offensive either. Just saying racial stuff isn’t in itself naughty or crude, it’s boring. And sadly, so is Carlos Mencia.

Paramount Home Entertainment releases the fifth season of Girlfriends on October 28th. As I said about the fourth season, the four stars in this sit-com are all terrible people. They are obnoxious, and irritating, and gold-digging and crazy and self-centred and stupid and lazy and conniving and backstabbing. Watching an entire season’s worth of women trying to one-up each other and screaming about their own needs could take a toll on one’s nerves. And mine are shot right now, as I write this review. The “girl” part of Girlfriends I understand. After all, the show is about four girls. The “friends” part confuses me. How these women can remain friends while being so LOUDLY into themselves is beyond me.

Season five of this show sees one of the girls trying to get back together with her husband, because she is pregnant. Why this man would even consider taking her back is beyond me. This woman is awful. Another woman struggles with the fact that she is in love with a man who confessed his love to her, but now he’s with another woman…straight out of Friends, I suppose. Another woman is publishing a book, and fighting with everyone around her because she is so powerfully self-centred and stupid. In fact, she appears to be much too stupid to write a book at all. I would suggest that most of the people in this show are too dumb and self-aggrandizing to accomplish most of the things that they do on the show.

Then there’s the laugh track. The reason sit-coms have a laugh track is that they need to tell you when things are funny, and it’s time to laugh. If you find yourself hearing the background laughter, and you didn’t laugh, and you’re not sure why, then you can know the people who made the show think that moment was funny. But you don’t. And you didn’t laugh, which means it actually wasn’t funny. In the first episode of Season Five of Girlfriends, there is a recurring joke about a lesbian chasing one of the main characters. And she keeps stopping the chase to take off her shoes. And the laugh track rolls. But then, you can tell that even the laugh track is half-hearted. Like, it’s a slow, quiet, rumbling of half-chuckle laughter in the background. One that gets quieter and quieter each time the gag is repeated. And deservedly so.

Girlfriends was cancelled after five seasons, so this was going to be the last one. But apparently it has, mystifyingly, just been renewed for several more seasons. At noon on Tuesdays somewhere in the states. Half-assed laugh tracks, self-centred, awful characters, and few compelling stories make this series one to skip. So skip it.

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing the First Season of Sister Sister on October 28th. It’s a sit-com about twin 14-year-old girls who are reunited after being separated at birth. This separation is conveniently explained with the line “stupid adoption agency”, and then dropped. So…they have lived in the same city their whole lives, no one has ever commented on the resemblance, until they run into each other while shopping. They are trying on the exact same clothes, which leads to a trying day for a put-upon sales person. And of course, also leads to the inevitable first-ever meeting of the twins, which is an unnecessarily long and simple and unfunny scene reminiscent of ninth-rate Marx Brothers.

Then the scene is set, after one episode - the girls have met, and they have bonded instantly. Tia’s father and Tamara’s mother hate each other. But they have to move in together, through some incredibly contrived circumstance. One can only assume that the reason this first episode is handled so quickly and sets up the story so fast is that the rest of Season One has much more important and funny episodes to share, and the set-up episode was simply an administrative thing that needed to get out of the way early. But then…the rest of the First Season contains two jokes. Like Marmaduke. Marmaduke either thinks he’s people, or he eats a lot. Sister Sister is the Marmaduke of sit-coms. Their parents hate each other. And the twins are…surprisingly similar! These are the two jokes of Sister Sister.

The pilot episode speeds at a million miles an hour through things that not only seem important, but also seem like they could be funny. But no time is given to these things. It’s right into standard sit-com stuff. Why not spread this stuff out over the entire season? There is enough material there to make this show both funny and interesting! But instead it isn’t. It’s Marmaduke.

In The Family is a film that serves more as a public service announcement than as an actual movie.  It’s out now, courtesy of First Run Features.  The threat of various types of cancer is one that millions of women have to deal with, and this documentary takes a look into the lives of the women affected by the disease.  Joanna Rudnick, the film maker, director and star of the film, is agonizing over her decision - with the new science that is able to map the human genome, testing is available to determine whether women carry the genetic mutation that virtually ensures that they will develop either ovarian or breast cancer.  Rudnick has taken the test, and she has that particular genetic mutation.

Now she faces a terrible decision.  She either decides whether to have her breasts and ovaries removed, which would mean she could never have children.  Or, she keeps them, has kids, and risks the fact that she will almost certainly develop cancer.  Of course, it affects her relationship with her boyfriend and her family, which creates the most drama on the DVD.  Rudnick also interviews other women trying to come to terms with their own test results, and there are some very compelling stories told in the film, especially one where one girl tests positive for this genetic abnormality and her sister does not.  But this film is really created for a niche, and will be appreciated most by the women who are going through the same thing.  In The Family should be required watching for women between the ages of 25 and 40, but anyone else will be kind of lost.  And a little bored.

To The Limit is a visually remarkable film about extreme mountain climbing, out now from First Run Features.  It’s the story of two German brothers, Thomas and Alexander Huber, who are attempting to set the record for fastest ascent of one of the most famous mountains in the climbing community.  “The Nose” of El Capitan, in Yosemite National Park is a one-kilometre vertical rock cliff that is one of the favourite places to climb for the best in the world.  The Hubers want to complete the climb in record time.  The first time this mountain was climbed, it took 47 days to reach the top.  Today, the top climbers in the world generally do it in 2-3 days.  The Huber brothers are attempting to get to the top in two and a half hours.

The philosophy behind speed climbing, according to the Hubers, appears to be similar to the philosophy behind heroin.  Once you start, you can’t stop, and you’re always looking for the next big thrill, the one that is bigger and better than the last one.  There is a lot of the obnoxious philosophizing that comes along with Extreme Sports movies - the idea that if you aren’t on the edge of death at all times, you aren’t really living your life and you’re a useless person.  The concept that following your dreams to the detriment of yourself and your family and common sense is the only way to truly be alive.  All this kind of stuff which comes across like a silly and condescending justification of a silly pursuit.

But in the end, there is nothing silly about this pursuit, and this goal.  These guys are totally committed to their goal of breaking this speed record, and by the end of the film they must have gone up and down the face of El Capitan about nine times.  They are testing the face, trying to find the route that will allow them to climb fastest, practicing over and over so they can break this record.  There is a great scene which is, sadly, too short, where they run into two elderly American climbers, one of whom was one of the first people to climb this place.  The Huber brothers seem fairly unimpressed, however.   They seem to want to make history themselves, but they appear to have no real interest in the history that came before them.  Perhaps if the encounter had lasted longer, we could have a different impression.  I’d like to think we would.

But there isn’t enough of that kind of stuff.  The brothers spend a lot of time being interviewed, saying the same things over and over.  They talk at length about their sibling rivalry.  And then they talk about it again.  And then there are shots of the film makers doing some climbing of their own.  And then there are some scenes of people tightrope walking over a gorge, just for fun.  We just want to see the climbing, but we get a little too much of…other things that aren’t climbing.

In the end, the Huber brothers are interesting, and their attitutes are rather illuminating.  But they are not really the stars of this movie.  The camera is the star.  The shots of these guys climbing up the face of a mountain at top speed are absolutely breathtaking.  This is what makes the pursuit of the record worthwhile for these climbers, and it’s what makes the movie worthwhile for us.  This is some of the most impressive filming I have seen in a documentary, ever.  Just the places these guys sit down to talk would freak me out.  Even in the most innocuous training runs, there is a white-knuckle appeal to this film that is truly intense.  For the camera work alone, this film is totally worthwhile.  Pick it up and let it take your breath away.

I have always loved zombie movies, both the good ones and the bad.  The bad, mostly for their absolute idiocy, their aggressive mediocrity, and their total lack of continuity, good acting, and quality dialogue.  I have reviewed a few of those of late - the new Day of the Dead, Automation Transfusion, Diary of the Dead, and Fido.  A new book presents a comprehensive history of the zombie, both in historic terms and also in movie terms.

Zombie Movies:  The Ultimate Guide is written by Glenn Kay, a zombie expert and a man who lived the dream of being an extra on a zombie flick, Land of the Dead, in 2005.  I interviewed him yesterday, and we discussed some of the great films (Dawn of the Dead, 28 Days Later, Night of the Living Dead) and some of the awful ones (Plan Nine From Outer Space, Uncle Sam, Horror Rises From The Tomb).  He explained what makes a zombie movie an actual zombie movie, how the genre has changed over the years, and even gave some makeup tips for those who might like to dress up as a zombie for Hallowe’en.

Also worth checking out (in the interview) is his description of Hong Kong and Japanese zombie kung-fu movies (one of my favourite bonkers genres).  In the book, he also goes into detail about Mexican Wrestler zombie movies, a sub-genre that really doesn’t get the credit it deserves.  Here is the link to the interview, or you can simply click on the “interviews” section to the right on this page.

http://blog.rogersradiointernet.com/cynicalcinema/interviews/

First Run Features released a terrific movie yesterday.  On The Rumba River is the Buena Vista Social Club of the Congo, only in some ways it is more compelling.  One of my favourite things in movies about music is when performers exude a certain joy when playing.  One of my favourite moments in any movie is a scene in the fantastic Jimmy Cliff Jamaican movie The Harder They Come, when Toots and the Maytals are in the studio recording their hit “Sweet and Dandy”.  The look of sheer joy on the faces of those men while recording that song, and the enthusiasm they have for the material is just wonderful to behold.  And there are a few moments in On The Rumba River that can match that enthusiasm.

The film is the story of a Congolese musician named Wendo Kolosoy, who was a major rumba star in Congo in the 1950s.  He was a boxer and ship mechanic who recorded a song called “Marie Louise” (as “Papa Wendo”)  that changed Congolese music forever.  It’s a music with a terrifically infectious rhythm, an upbeat message, and a joyful delivery.  After a while, however, Wendo slipped into obscurity as the Congo descended into violent confrontations and chaos.  On The Rumba River picks up his story as he tries to get the old band back together (think a real-life version of the beginning of Blues Brothers) for a series of performances.  The old musicians are mostly poor, many are jobless, and this is a welcome diversion.

As the movie goes along, Wendo reminisces about the old days of music in Congo.  So too do his band mates, who seem to remember Wendo’s fighting ability almost as much as they remember his musical ability.  There is some talk about the Portugese occupation, when the Congolese musicians were not allowed to play music in their native language, Lingala, because the Portugese could not understand the words and thought perhaps they were subversive.  But judging by the songs we hear in this movie, they are all about “I love you” and “where did you go” and “I need you back” and so forth.  Joyful, exuberant songs about love and loving life.  And yet we hear stories of people playing music in Lingala, and being killed for it.

The one problem I have with the movie is that there is not enough of the historic context throughout the film.  There is quite a bit more, right at the very end, but it made me think that much more could have been made of the music in the context of the history of Congo - the violence, the Portugese, the civil wars, and the end of colonialism.  But this is a minor complaint, since the music speaks for itself, and it is the music itself that is the real star of the film.  Papa Wendo’s rumba music is something to hear, for any music fan.  And it involves one of the coolest instruments I’ve seen in a while - the “likembe”, or “thumb-piano”.

On The Rumba River is a very, very good look at music in a part of the world to which we would ordinarily not be exposed.  It gets eight stars for the music and the participants, as well as the terrific filming of a beautiful country.  But it doesn’t quite make it to “essential” status, because it doesn’t take a close enough look at that country itself.  For a movie that does this extremely well, check out the brilliant but too-short documentary Fela Kuti:  Music Is The Weapon, about Nigerian musician Fela Kuti and his battles with the government and repression.  In fact, you would really do well to pick up both DVDs.  On The Rumba River came out yesterday, and is available now.

I’m a little too young to remember the events of the Clarence Thomas Supreme Court confirmation hearings in front of the U.S. Senate.  It happened when I was 12 or 13 years old, and I was blissfully unaware of the goings-on.  But my girlfriend remembers it very well.  This is party because she is a couple of years older than I am, and partly because she is a woman.  Certainly, this Senate hearing affected women far more than it did men.  At the beginning of Sex And Justice, feminist icon Gloria Steinem does a brief introduction, talking about how this one event changed the Supreme Court, and changed history.  And I thought - really?  This changed history?  Clarence Thomas is still a member of the Supreme Court.  Did this hearing do anything at all?

Because, you see, although I may not have watched at the time, I am aware of what transpired between Clarence Thomas and Anita Hill.  And I know about the outcome.  (Thomas was elected to the Supreme Court, confirmed by a 52-48 vote.)  So how did this change the world?  Well, although the outcome of the hearings still rankles women (my girlfriend among them) seventeen years later, it did indeed change the world for them.  The accusation of sexual harassment would no longer be brushed aside by the vast majority of men in positions of power.  The world finally saw sexual harassment to be a crime, and began to take it very seriously.

Well, the world did.  Not so much the U.S. Senate.  Which, perhaps, was the impetus the world needed to begin looking deeper into the subject.  In Sex And Justice, Gloria Steinem suggests that it was impossible, in 1991, for Anita Hill to get a fair shake from the Senate, since she was up against nothing but men.  The implication being that only a woman could understand, in 1991, what sexual harassment felt like for another woman.  I think Steinem is making a bit too much of a blanket statement here.  Surely, Anita Hill had a very difficult time, and did not get a fair shake.  But I think a few of the senators (Ted Kennedy, especially) had a pretty good handle on what was happening, and treated the situation with the gravity and fairness that it deserved.

The movie, Sex And Justice, is basically a highlight film from the three days of 1991 Senate hearings, when Anita Hill came out with her charges of sexual harassment against Clarence Thomas.  And while Gloria Steinem occasionally pops up to make a comment or two, for the most part the DVD is just the hearings.  No narration, no voiceover, no explanation, just the straight hearings themselves.  But frankly, those hearings speak for themselves.  We don’t need any further explanation, because the whole thing is laid out in front of us, and allows us to decide for ourselves.

Of course, what this means is that I came away from this DVD with a different opinion about the proceedings than someone else would.  Perhaps someone else would believe Clarence Thomas, and that he was right when he made the suggestion that Anita Hill was some kind of crackpot who invented all these allegations in order to get attention.  I am not one of those people.  I certainly believe that Anita Hill was telling the truth, and that Clarence Thomas was a creepy weirdo.  She just comes off as earnest and sensible, whereas Thomas comes off as arrogant, unrepentant, and extremely self-righteous.  But that’s not the reason to watch this DVD.  The reason to watch is to see the Senate acting the way it did in 1991.

Some senators seem sympathetic and reasonable.  Ted Kennedy, as I said before, and Joe Biden, for example.  Other senators appear to be absolutely demented, like Strom Thurmond and Arlen Specter, both of whom attacked Anita Hill mercilessly, and were compared to McCarthy after this event.  But craziest of all is Orrin Hatch, who seems to take great delight in repeating the most sensational sexual dialogue in the trial.  “Long Dong Silver”, “pubic hair on my coke”, and so forth.  He then gets intensely angry, righteously indignant, and almost scary when he launches into this crazy defense of Thomas.  And you think - aren’t you supposed to ask the man questions?  Instead, Orrin Hatch stands in the middle of the senate floor and screams anti-Anita-Hill stuff..at Clarence Thomas.  It is genuinely surreal.

One of those events that will be remembered as a watershed for women in North America, the Clarence Thomas - Anita Hill hearings remain compelling and shocking viewing even today.  The DVD was released by First Run Features to coincide with the first sitting of the Supreme Court this year, which began in early October.  It’s worth picking up.

Pick of the week:  Lou Reed’s Berlin (*********9/10):  Mostly for fans of Lou Reed, this film is directed wonderfully by Julian Schnabel (The Diving Bell And the Butterfly).  One of the best live-music DVDs of the year.
Download Lou Reed:  Berlin

Re-issue of the week:  A Threesome With Kevin Smith (********8/10):  A case can be made for owning Clerks II, albeit not a very good case.  However, if it is packaged with Clerks, a classic, nd Chasing Amy, an even greater classic, this three-pack is defnintely worthwhile.
Download Threesome With Kevin Smith

Worst DVD of the week:  My Little Pony:  A Very Minty Christmas (*1/10):  This kids’ cartoon Christmas DVD could very well ruin your life.  Or maybe the lives of your children.  Steer clear!
Download My Little Pony:  A Very Minty Christmas

The Incredible Hulk (8/10):  One of the best reasons to rent this one and see it is that there appears to be some crossover with other big comic book movies, like Iron Man.  And when all of those movies get put together into one gigantic blockbuster, you will want to have seen them all.  Also, there’s Edward Norton.  He’s good.

Mother of Tears (****4/10):  Dario Argento has not really taken any chances with his horror movies in about twenty years.  What was once the stuff of classic films (Suspiria) is now dated and obsolete.
Download Mother of Tears

Noise:  Sounds like a fun premise.  Tim Roth goes nuts and wages war on car alarms, becoming a vigilante stalking Manhattan.  He is given the name “The Rectifier”, and the mayor goes after him.  Also stars Bridget Moynahan.

The Strangers (****4/10):  When the scariest stuff in a movie is the stuff on the DVD box, you have problems.  Of course, Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman have bigger problems in the film itself, but no one watching will care.
Download The Strangers

Linewatch:  Cuba Gooding Jr. hasn’t done a good movie since Boyz N The Hood.  And I don’t expect him to start now.  This time he is a border patrol officer with a secret past.  And he (I can only assume) remains a terrible actor.

Comedy Central Salutes George W. Bush (***3/10):  With such a ripe-for-parody subject, it boggles my mind that Comedy Central could fail so thoroughly here.  The two bright spots on this otherwise-awful DVD - Lewis Black’s Root of all Evil, and a South Park episode.
Download Comedy Central Salutes George W. Bush

The Lazarus Project:  Paul Walker looked like he was ready to become a pretty cool star when he did Running Scared, but since then he has returned to more Fast and Furious style mediocrity.  Hopefully, he can make this movie better than it sounds.  It involves crime, family, love, the death penalty, dream sequences and supernatural decisions that must be made.  See?  Sounds awful…

Dynasty, Season Three, Volume One (***3/10):  Here is another opportunity to revisit one of the most idiotic prime-time soap operas of all time.  Young Heather Locklear and aging Joan Collins provide the eye candy.
Download Dynasty:  Season 3, Volume 1

Expelled:  No Intelligence Allowed:  Ben Stein travels the globe in an attempt to make a case for the theory of intelligent design.  Could be a good documentary, but has received decidedly mixed reviews.

Jon And Kate Plus Eight Seasons One and Two (***3/10):  A couple has eight kids - twins and sextuplets.  And they are filmed for a reality show.  That’s…about it.  They have to do stuff eight times!  Get it?  Not me.
Download TLC:  Jon & Kate + E8ght

Anaconda 3:  Offspring:  Yes, there is another Anaconda movie.  Why am I excited about this one?  Because of my love of aggressive mediocrity, and it doesn’t get any more aggressively mediocre than…David Hasselhoff.  Yes, this movie stars David Hasselhoff.  Score!

On The Rumba River (8/10):  A beautifully shot documentary about one of the world’s sadly forgotten musicians, Papa Wendo, who was once the biggest name in the Congo before Mobutu arrived and wrecked the place up.  Magnificent music.
Download On The Rumba River

Sex and Justice (8/10):  A highlight film of Clarence Thomas’ Supreme Court confirmation hearing in 1991, where senators bizarrely attacked Anita Hill over her allegations of sexual impropriety.  A great historical document that remains extremely watchable and shocking.
Download Sex and Justice

To The Limit (7/10):  A wonderfully filmed documentary about two brothers attempting to set a speed-mountain-climbing record in Yosemite National Park.  Magnificent camera work, white-knuckle action, but some boring interviews.
Download To the Limit

Also out:

Family Guy Vol. 6
It’s a Free World
Go Diego Go!  It’s a Bug’s World
No Man’s Land:  The Rise of Reeker
This Beautiful City

Next Week:

Journey to the Centre of the Earth (2/10)
Sister Sister First Season (3/10)
Girlfriends Fifth Season (3/10)
Carlos Mencia Performance Enhanced (3/10)
The 4400 Complete Series (8/10)
Blue Elephant
Quentin Tarantino presents:  Hell Ride (7/10)
An American Crime
Beaufort
Tinker Bell
Houdini’s Death Defying Acts
Zombie Strippers
Dead Space:  Downfall
The L Word:  Complete Fifth Season (6/10)
Feast 2:  Sloppy Seconds
Lone Rider
Trailer Park of Terror

There are many things horror movies can do to scare people. Some are frightening because of the atmosphere they create - using music, lighting, sound effects and good camera work. Others create a memorable character, like a maniac who can’t be stopped or a sadist who strikes in your dreams. And then there are the films who just aren’t that scary. And they attempt to create scares before you watch the film. They include phrases on the DVD box that are designed to creep you out before the movie begins. They feature tag lines that are designed to creep you out without having started the film. Alliance Films is releasing one of these movies October 21st. The tagline to The Strangers is “because you were home”. This is a line delivered during the movie that is featured prominently in the trailers. It is meant to be scary enough to create fright throughout the film itself.

But it isn’t. You see, the idea here in the film is that Liv Tyler and Scott Speedman are alone in a country house, and get attacked by three maniacs who wear bags on their heads and masks on their faces. There is no explanation for it, there is no reasoning behind it, in fact the only words these maniacs say during the entire movie is “because you were home”. So we’re meant to be scared of the apparently random nature of these acts. Also featured prominently on the DVD box and in the trailers are phrases like “inspired by disturbing true events”. This is meant to scare us when watching, because we’re meant to think “oh my God, this could happen to me! I’ve been in a house before!” But the problem with this movie is that when I watched it, I thought that if this DID happen to me, I wouldn’t be terribly scared, and I think I would be able to prevail pretty easily over these faceless lunatics.

The bag-head mask-wearers don’t have any weapons, other than those they find lying around the house. Their main plan here, it seems, is to frighten the two occupants of the house so much that they lose their bearings, lose their minds, and become easy pickings. But here’s the problem. Just wearing a bag on your head, smashing a car, and throwing mud at the windows is not enough to scare people. At the very least, it isn’t enough to scare the audience of this film. If I am sitting in this house, I’m just angry. I’m not terrified, I’m pissed off. They smashed my car! And threw mud at my windows! But Speedman and Tyler quickly become petrified with fear, and that is the only reason the rest of the movie unfolds the way it does. Between the two of them and their shotgun, it seems reasonable they could prevent two weaponless women and an axe-wielding man from murdering them. But they are too scared to think straight. All they would have to do is sit together in the same living room, and wait until the bad guys showed up. Then shoot them. Simple.

The movie opens, once again, with the phrase “inspired by true events”. Then, it basically tells us how the movie ends, in the first few seconds. Spoiler alert: I don’t know if technically qualifies as a spoiler, since it happens within the first few seconds of this film, but both of the main characters die. They get murdered. And there is blood everywhere. End spoiler. Of course, as the movie gets going, Tyler and Speedman have to be having some relationship problems, because otherwise…what? What would happen if they were just a couple in a house? Why do they need to have tension between them before the movie gets going? That tension is out the window as soon as the bad guys show up anyway. So Speedman has asked Tyler to marry him, and she has said no. OK, on with the movie.

Very quickly, the strangers manage to terrify Liv Tyler into an absolute panic. When Scott Speedman returns home, he quickly gets sucked into the panic himself. Because panic, in horror movies, is contagious. Before long, they are hiding in a tiny little room, cradling their shotgun, quaking in their boots, and crying softly to themselves. This leads to that most obvious of horror movie devices. Here’s how it works: Speedman’s buddy comes by the house, looking as though he could provide help for the couple. After all, now the odds are three-on-three, and there are two guys and one girl against two girls and one guy. But in their blind panic, Tyler and Speedman shoot their friend instead of the bad guy. Negating the help he could have offered, increasing their own panic, and amping up the irony.

Here’s something else that bugs me in movies. Not just horror movies, but many gangster movies as well. Eventually, the bad guys get our star couple into a couple of chairs and tie them up. When you tie someone up in a movie, just putting them in a wooden chair and wrapping a bunch of ropes around their torso is not really tying them up. It looks very easy to just stand up, whereupon the ropes will come off the chair and you will be free. When you tie someone up, make sure it doesn’t look like they can get free with a shrug of their shoulders. Of course, this “tying” up scene leads to the big finale, which Spoiler alert: involves the bad guys murdering the good guys. The murders are not especially sadistic. It’s rare that I call for more blood and gore, but the tone of the movie seems to have been leading up to something heinous, and instead we get just some conventional stabbing. Why wouldn’t they have done this before when they were unconscious? Why tie them up first? And why do the bad guys take off their masks at the end if the camera is not going to show their faces anyway? Especially since we’ve already seen the face of one of the girls at the twenty minute mark of the movie? Bizarre. End spoiler.

While The Strangers contains some decent atmospheric scares, and some reasonably creepy scenes of people with masks standing still, it just doesn’t work. It seems that it is trying to deliver a message - like, there is nothing to fear except fear itself…or, something about faceless violence, or random acts of lunacy, or something. But I can’t figure out what that message is supposed to be, and that means it isn’t very well done. It’s just bad things happening to defenseless people, which is not in itself terribly scary. Oh, but it COULD happen to YOU.

To suggest that Mother Of Tears completes a trilogy is, frankly, suspect. Technically, it does indeed complete a very loose “trilogy” that legendary Italian horror director Dario Argento began in 1977 with the brilliant classic Supsiria. The second movie in this “trilogy” is called Inferno, and it was released in 1980. I suppose that a trilogy can be finished twenty-eight years after the second installment, but the only things connecting these three movies are the director himself and a vague similarity in the stories of the witches that populate each one. Alliance Films released Mother of Tears October 14th, and it is attempting to cash in on the underground cult status of the legendary Suspiria. But the two films are not even close to being in the same league.

Suspiria was a masterpiece of tone and suspense. The soundtrack was magnificent, the filming new and the set design was visually stunning. All of this combined to create an atmosphere of foreboding, genuine tension, and some truly terrifying moments. An almost psychedelic assault on the senses, it’s a colourful, vibrant, and horrifically violent film that really works in nearly every way. I say “nearly” because the acting is not stellar, the script is pretty weak, and the climax to the film leaves quite a bit to be desired. But the quality of the rest of the film more than makes up for the problems, and it ushered in a whole new genre of horror films, initially in Italy and then the rest of the world. Inferno was quite good as well, but any film would have difficulty measuring up to Suspiria when being referred to as a “sequel” to that classic. Anyone remember Chinatown 2? Yeah, I thought so.

Mother of Tears features some of the things that make almost any Dario Argento movie worth watching. It is visually stunning, as one would expect, and has a terrific score that heightens the fear factor and the mood. The camera work is impressive, and there is a tremendous amount of graphic gore. Also, the film features many, many boobs, two of them belonging to Argento’s daughter Asia (remember that Vin Diesel movie XXX? Yeah, I thought so.) Asia Argento is the star of the movie, playing a woman named Sarah who works at a museum, and begins to look at a strange, ancient urn that is dug up by a construction crew in Rome. Within a few minutes of the appearance of the urn, there is an appearance made by a monkey. That is quickly followed by some shadowy men in cloaks who ratchet open Sarah’s friend’s mouth until her skull splits, then disembowl her and strangle her with her own intestines.

After escaping from these men in cloaks, Sarah runs off, and no more references are made to the men in cloaks again, in the whole film. They merely disappear, and some witches begin to appear instead. The rest of the movie involves cheesy apparitions giving Sarah advice, and what basically amounts to a long chase through Rome from one person who might be able to help her to another person who might be able to help her. Each of these people is killed (graphically) before they actually get around to helping her. Which, unfortunately, means they also get killed before they get around to explaining anything to her. Which means that we, the audience, never have anything, ever, explained to us. We do need some explanation. Instead we get this strange and incomprehensible series of chases, culminating in a strange and incomprehensible ritual and SPOILER WARNING: perhaps the easiest, most anti-climactic dispatching of the main villain in movie history.

In the meantime, the city of Rome goes crazy, with the citizens turning on each other in graphic scenes of assault, stabbings, shootings, beatings, and infanticide. In fact, I think there may be more children, many of them infants, killed graphically in this film than I have ever seen in a movie before. There is even a scene where we see a witch who has eaten what is presumably a fetus, and she is attached like a fish on a hook by an umbilical cord that is still attached inside another witch’s uterus. To call this violence “excessive” doesn’t begin to cover it. I expected some truly heinous scenes, knowing what Dario Argento is all about, so I wasn’t terribly freaked out by any of this, until my own personal phobia of nipples was triggered when a cop gets his nipple sliced off. Only then did I turn away in disgust and curl up in a ball.

The biggest difference between Suspiria and Mother of Tears is that while the acting, plot, and climax are thin in both, this isn’t enough to detract from Supsiria’s classic status. And both feature great camera work, great music, and great set design. But this isn’t enough to elevate Mother of Tears out of “garbage” status. Both movies will likely be considered classic by some. Both will be considered garbage by others. I split my vote here, and for me, Mother of Tears just doesn’t make the cut.

One of the best musical releases this year is Lou Reed’s Berlin, a concert film directed by Julian Schnabel, the man responsible for last year’s magnificent The Diving Bell and the Butterfly. Alliance Films releases the DVD this week, on October 21st. It’s a concert movie shot at St. Ann’s warehouse in Brooklyn in 2006. Reed is performing his album Berlin live for the first time. The story of the album would actually make for a fantastic documentary in itself. Released in 1973, it was an abject failure, both critically and commercially. As an artist who never really cared about critics, or commercial success, one would assume that Reed was fairly unconcerned with the fact that Berlin entered the world as a total flop. But since 1973, Reed has rarely played any material from the album at all, let alone the entire album, the way he does here.

Full disclosure here - I am a huge fan of Berlin. I think it’s one of the great records of the 1970s, and it has been underappreciated for years. It speaks, as Schnabel says, of the impossibility of love. Sure, it’s overblown. And sure, it’s dark and artsy and all of that. But then, that’s Lou Reed. And near the end of 2006, the album was resurrected by Reed and some stellar guest musicians in a five-night stand at St. Ann’s. Those five nights were captured on film by Schnabel, and made into a truly remarkable concert movie. It isn’t just Reed performing on the stage, although that is of course the best part. Schnabel inserts footage of Emmanuelle Seigner, the gorgeous star of The Diving Bell And the Butterfly, into the film. He shoots her as the star of the album, the “Caroline” who is the central character of Reed’s opus. And although he uses her sparingly, Seigner’s presence alone gives added impact to the lyrics and music of Reed.

I will say this - Berlin is for Reed fans, most of all. You must like Lou Reed. He must be a guy you would pay to see in concert. Because he does have a gravelly, rather monotone delivery, and if you don’t like him specifically you could get pretty bored pretty fast. But if you are a Reed fan, you’re into him for the music and the lyrics and the tone of his music. And Schnabel has done a better job of capturing that tone and that feel than I ever imagined possible. The teaming of the two is sheer genius. The special features are kind of weak, with a very short clip of Reed and Schnabel on Elvis Costello’s talk show being the highlight. But the film itself is wonderful, and a must for any fans of Lou Reed.

Clerks (********8/10):  Alliance Films is releasing a three-DVD set of Kevin Smith movies on October 21st, and it’s a set well worth revisiting. While Smith is still best known for his movie Clerks in 1994, he has done many other good films. Clerks was a tiny little indie movie, shot by Smith and starring his friends, in black-and-white and for a minuscule budget, that managed to become a hit, and a cult sensation in future years. It remains a slacker classic, one that will still set off a spark of painful recognition in anyone who has worked a retail job. The eight hours at a time of standing around doing nothing. (Actually, the retail jobs I’ve had have involved eight hour shifts full of busy work. Like “cleaning” things that are already clean, so it doesn’t look like you have nothing to do but stand around for eight hours.) The dialogue is crisp, fresh, filthy and hilarious, and the actors are all considerably better than one would expect for a film that cost $27,000 to make.

Clerks II (****4/10):  That being said, Clerks is substantially over-rated. It gets high marks for being very good for a $27,000 movie, and it is. But the dialogue is what carries it, and it is basically just as good as watching an hour and a half of really good, funny stand-up. And it’s influence has mostly extended to other Kevin Smith movies. With mixed results. For example, Clerks II, which was very disappointing. Clerks II is not as good as Clerks, but there are some fantastic moments of nerd dialogue. The best is a scene where Lord of the Rings nerds battle Star Wars nerds for the title of One Trilogy To Rule Them All. But the movie culminates in a scene involving a man, a donkey, and sexual intercourse. Kevin Smith seems to think this is very funny, and he’s right to a point. The characters seem to think watching a woman having sex with the donkey will be an interesting thrill. But when they find out it’s a man and a donkey, apparently that’s just gross. Either way, it’s SEX WITH A DONKEY! Who cares if it’s a woman, a man or an octopus? The joke runs out of steam after three minutes, but goes on for thirty.

Chasing Amy (**********10/10):  But where Clerks has become over-rated in the past 14 years, other Smith movies have been under-rated. And one of those movies is Chasing Amy. Ben Affleck stars as a comic book writer who falls in love with Joey Lauren Adams, who is a lesbian. Some brilliant dialogue comes from Jason Lee, who plays Affleck’s best friend and illustrator. His Jaws-style comparison of scars received during oral sex with Adams is fantastic, and his dissection of Jughead and Archie’s homosexual relationship is magnificent. In fact, this entire film is magnificent, in the way it approaches young people in relationships. Jealousy, homosexuality and sexual experience are all given a brand-new, totally refreshing treatment, and the results are both intelligent and hilarious. Chasing Amy deserves to be considered one of the all-time greatest angst-and-relationships movies.

All three of these films are featured on the new Threesome With Kevin Smith set. Clerks is a must-have, a classic that while it doesn’t hold up over time remains hilarious and must be watched by those who haven’t yet seen it. Chasing Amy is a classic, a movie that will stand the test of time and then some. The DVD of that movie included in this set is from the Criterion Collection, a series of classic films released with incredible restoration and the best picture imaginable from a regular DVD. And the third movie is Clerks II, a disappointing effort that has decent moments. I suppose it is included in this set because it is the logical companion to the first film. But I would have much rather seen Clerks, Chasing Amy and Dogma included together, since Dogma is also a very under-rated Kevin Smith movie. But as it stands, two out of three isn’t bad.