Cynical Cinema

In Bruges (10/10):  Violent, hilarious, totally politically-incorrect.  This is a little movie, a smart movie, and very nearly a perfect movie.  Rent it now.

Drillbit Taylor (2/10):  The little chubby kid has some seriously great lines and moments, but that’s all there is to recommend this movie.  The rest of it absolutely sucks.

Meet The Browns:  Tyler Perry is still making movies…this is another one.  Stars Sofia Vergara and Angela Bassett, but it may just not be worthwhile anyway.

City of Men (8/10):  A reasonably good follow-up to the all time classic City of God, this is a spin-off of the TV show in Brazil which was a spin-off of the original movie.

Mad Men Season One:  1960s New York ad agency.  A well-respected, highly regarded TV series that gets it’s DVD release today.

Vantage Point:  A presidential murder told from several different viewpoints, a la Rashomon.  From all critical viewpoints, however, this movie is dreadful.

Days of Darkness:  A man lives a double life - one life is a fantasy life, the other is real.  In real life he’s a loser.  In his fantasy life, he’s a knight in shining armour, irresistable ladies’ man.  Could go either way.  Denys Arcand directed this French Canadian film, so that’s something on the plus side.

Asterix Et Obelix Contre Cesar (5/10):  The famous French comic books are brought to life in this 1999 film starring Gerard Depardieu and Roberto Benigni.  A little too much reliance on the comic books themselves, but all in all a decent way for kids to learn French.

Asterix Et Obelix:  Mission Cleopatre (6/10):  An even better movie than Contre Cesar, simply because Monica Bellucci is ridiculously hot as Cleopatra.  Ridiculously hot.  Neither of these two films has English subtitles or English dubbing available.

Walker:  Texas Ranger, Season Five (4/10):  If you watch with a developed sense of irony, you may well enjoy this.  But boy, you really can’t take it seriously, or you might have brain failure.

Streets of San Francisco, Season Two Volume One (7/10):  Karl Malden and Michael Douglas are the stars of this series.  One of the best casts for a TV series, and the San Francisco streets are amazing as well.

Also out:

100 Million B.C.
Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd:  Out of Control
Shotgun Stories
X-Files:  Revelations
Time Bomb

Next week:

The Ruins
Superhero Movie
Funny Games
The Tracey Fragments
Stop-Loss
Charlie Bartlett
Batman:  Gotham Knight
Romulus My Father
Blind Eye
Dungeon Girl
Impact Point
Towards Darkness
Shaggy and Scooby-Doo Get a Clue Vol. 2
Bella
Bonneville
Heavy Metal in Baghdad
Late Fragment
Stories of Lost Souls
Backyardigans:  The Mighty Match-Up!

10,000 BC (1/10):  A bunch of prehistoric people do battle with prehistoric beasts in what most critics have said is one of the worst movies imaginable.  And we critics can imagine some pretty awful movies.

The Spiderwick Chronicles (6/10):  Freddie Highmore continues to be the kid who stars on movies about imaginary lands with goblins and fairies and such.  This one follows on the heels of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Finding NEverland, and Arthur and the Invisibles.

Definitely, Maybe:  Ryan Reynolds tells Abigail Breslin, (who playws his daughter) the story of his romantic life.  Apparently better than most sappy romatic stuff.

Boarding Gate:  The always smokin-hot Asia Argento gets into some good-time S&M and weird con games with sexy folks.  She is the kind of woman who makes this seem like a good idea for a movie.

Heroes of the East (8/10):  A classic 1979 kung-fu film starring Gordon Liu (Pai Mei from Kill Bill) as a Chinese martial artist who must take on seven Japanese masters.  Great fight scenes, good comedy, an influential movie in the genre.

Come Drink With Me (9/10):  A true classic, from 1965, in the kung-fu genre.  Starring Cheng Pei Pei, (Jade Fox from Crouching Tiger Hidden Dragon) who was sensational as a young woman, this is the film that inspired countless others, including most notably Crouching Tiger.

Honeydripper:  Danny Glover runs a juke-joint called the Honeydripper in a movie about the beginnings of rock and roll.

Futurama:  The Beast With a Billion Backs:  Futurama’s first full-length feature film, direct to DVD.

The Business of Being Born:  Ricki Lake provides insight into the process of childbirth.  Really.  This is a movie.

Unstable Fables:  Three Pigs and a Baby (6/10):  Jim Henson’s studio produces this, the first installment in what will be a series of movies re-examining old fairy tales.  This one, the three little pigs.  Charming, with enough references to keep adults happy.

Also out today:

Caramel
Flight of the Conchords Season One
Days of Darkness
The Eye III
Harm’s Way
Intimate Enemies
Savage Planet
Never Forget

Out next week:

Vantage Point
Drillbit Taylor
In Bruges
Meet The Browns
Sex and Death 101
City of Men
Prairie Fever
Mad Men Season One
100 Million BC
Shotgun Stories
X-Files:  Revelations
Time Bomb
Get Smart’s Bruce and Lloyd:  Out of Control

Be Kind Rewind (7/10):  Jack Black and especially Mos Def are fantastic in this funny comedy about two losers who have to re-create old movies themselves to replace VHS tapes that have been erased at their rental store.  Movie lovers will enjoy.

Fool’s Gold:  Another Matthew McConaughey - Kate Hudson movie, this one is sure to be dreadful.  Unless you want to see Kate Hudson in a bikini for two hours.  Or a shirtless McConaughey for two hours.

Californication Season One (9/10):  The best show on TV comes to DVD with the release of Season One.  Full of nudity, sex, drug use and gross bodily functions, and David Duchovny is remarkably good.  Smart, funny and terrific.

Welcome Home Roscoe Jenkins:  A TV self-hellp guru returns to the small town where he grew up, and tries to prove he’s no longer the kid that was always picked on…sounds like Mr. Woodcock with Martin Lawrence in the Seann William Scott role.  Which…sounds awful.

Control (9/10):  The best musical biopic of the past decade.  And yes, that includes Ray and Walk The Line.  This profile of Joy Division lead singer Ian Curtis, who tragically hanged himself in 1980, tells the story through the music, through pictures, and through a tour-de-force performance by Sam Riley.

The Flock (4/10):  Richard Gere mentors Claire Danes as a pedophile profiler and monitor.  A girl goes missing, they must track her down.  It’s pretty awful.

 Joy Division (8/10):  Documentary that tackles much the same subject matter as Control, but with the real subjects being interviewed, and more focus on the greatness of the rest of the band than simply on the story of Ian Curtis.  Powerful and interesting.

Transformers Animated:  Transform And Roll Out (3/10):  A TV series made into a DVD to capitalize on the revitalized market for Transformers since that big movie.  Mostly annoying, the same guy who does the big-voice stuff on CHEZ also voices Optimus Prime.

Four Months, Three Weeks and Two Days:  The film I am anticipating greatly, it’s Romanian (and Romanian films have been great in recent years).  Two girls go to see an illegal abortion doctor.

Jericho Season Two (6/10):  A slightly overlooked show that was cancelled after this season.  Wraps up nicely with the series finale, and includes the final episode that would have aired had the series been extended for another year.

My Mom’s New Boyfriend:  Meg Ryan and Antonio Banderas star in a movie about an FBI agent whose mother is dating…and he spies on her boyfriend…and espionage ensues.  Blah!

The Tatooist:  A tattooist unwittingly unleashes a forcible deadly spirit through an ancient Samoan tattoo tool. Now marked for death, he will need to uncover the source of the evil in order to save his new love, and recover his own soul.   Seriously.

Rails & Ties:  A deadly collision between a train and car lead to an unlikely bond between the train engineer and a young boy who escapes the carnage.   Kevin Bacon and Marcia Gay Harden star.

Also out this week:

Chaos Theory (5/10)
It’s a Boy Girl Thing (3/10)
Just Add Water
Under The Same Moon
My Name Is Juani
On The Doll
Librarian 2:  Return to King Solomon’s Mines (3/10)

 Next week:

The Spiderwick Chronicles (7/10)
Persepolis (9/10)
Vantage Point
Definitely, Maybe
In Bruges (10/10)
Meet The Browns
Sex And Death 101
10,000 BC (1/10)
Drillbit Taylor (2/10)
Boarding Gate
City Of Men (8/10)
Futurama:  Beast With A Billion Backs
Mad Men Season One
Honeydripper
Prairie Fever
The Business of Being Born
Caramel
The Eye 3
Harm’s Way
Never Forget
Unstable Fables:  Three Pigs And A Baby (6/10)
Intimate Enemies
Savage Planet
Days of Darkness
Flight of the Conchords:  Complete First Season

Jumper (5/10):  The always-wooden Hayden Christensen teams up with the will-work-for-beer-nuts Samuel L. Jackson in a film about a guy who “jumps” through time and space.  It’s not terrible, but….

The Bucket List (3/10):  I know for a fact that this is terrible.  Because I watched it.  And I’m fairly angry that I did.  Jack Nicholson and Morgan Freeman are great together, but the movie around them is abysmal.

The Other Boleyn Girl:  Scarlett Johanssen and Natalie Portman, together?  In the same movie?  Awesome…but then I also thought The Black Dahlia was going to be great with Scarlett Johanssen and Hilary Swank.  And it sucked.

Fatal Contact (6/10):  Hong Kong Kung-Fu, with some decent action scenes.  Underground fights are nothing new to the world of martial arts movies, but these are decently filmed and the movie is surprisingly moving.

Witless Protection:  Larry the Cable Guy.  The witness protection program.  Ugh.

Crusing Bar (3/10):  Some of the worst subtitles I have ever seen on a movie.  Get this only if you are francophone.  Even then, I wouldn’t really recommend it.

Smiley Face:  The always-entertaining John Krasinski and Anna Farris team up for a comedy where a girl gets really stoned and walks around.  There might be more plot but…who cares.

Comedy Central’s Home Grown (5/10):  A series of vignettes, skits, and full episodes of Comedy Central programming that are predicated on the idea that people who smoke weed like nothing more than to watch other people doing the same.

The Grand:  Woody Harrelson is a gambler.  Cheryl Hines (Curb Your Enthusiasm) co-stars.  Everyone wins.  Or doesn’t.

American Gangster Season Two (9/10):  Real-life African American crime figures get biographical, documentary treatment in an excellent show from BET.  Ving Rhames narrates.  Season Two includes the guy who inspired The Wire, and Frank Lucas from the movie American Gangster.

Timber Falls:  Young hot girl goes to the woods…there’s evil in the woods…stop me if you’ve heard this one before…

The Odd Couple Season Four (6/10):  A solid TV show before all the odd-couple I’m-clean and you’re-dirty jokes ran out.  They are beginning to run out in season four.

The List:  Dangerous blood oaths in the confederate army lead to dangerous doings 140 years later.  Malcolm McDowell is somehow involved.

The Fugitive Season Two (7/10):  It would have been nice to see more continuity and continuing story lines, but the episodes themselves remain as good as ever.

Alive or Dead:  Horror movie involving hot girls and a school bus.

Hawaii Five-O Season Four (6/10):  This show was ridiculous, but stands up as a campy and hilarious blueprint that actors like David Caruso have used to their advantage in later years.  Dated, cheesy, but loads of fun.

Also out:

Impy’s Island
The Signal
The Planet
Super High Me
Wieners

Semi-Pro (6/10):  The type of comedy Will Ferrell can do in his sleep, and sometimes does do in his sleep.  The supporting cast is good, although the comedy and story are very thin.  The film has a heart and a historical relevance that make it watchable.

The Eye:  Jessica Alba in a horror remake of yet another Asian frightfest.  Not only has no film since The Ring come close to living up to it’s Asian original, this one also stars Jessica Alba.  Ugh.

Meet The Spartans:  Likely to be the worst movie of the week, and perhaps of the year, Meet The Spartans is done by the same people who did two of the worst movies of all time, Epic Movie and Date Movie.  Steer clear.

The Take:  John Leguizamo and Tyrese Gibson star in a movie about an armored truck driver who survives a hijacking.  Seems like a decent plot, but looks like it could go stupid-Rambo in the second act.

Vince Vaughn’s Wild West Comedy Tour (8/10):  There isn’t enough actual comedy, but this behind-the-scenes look at a cross-country 30-day 30-city tour hosted by Vince Vaughn has some great moments and shows comedians at their essence.  A great watch.

Flawless:  Demi Moore and Michael Caine plot to heist diamonds at the London Diamond Corporation in the 60s.  Could be an excellent heist picture.

Mama’s Boy:  Jon Heder (Napoleon Dynamite) is thirty and still lives at home with his mom, Diane Keaton.  Funny stuff happens.  Judging by the horrible movies with this same plot over the past few years (Failure to Launch, I’m looking at you) and judging by the terrible decisions Diane Keaton has made recently (Mad Money, Because I Said So), this could be a giant pile of crap.  Or not.

The Bronx Is Burning (8/10):  ESPN mini-series about the New York Yankees and their contentious run for the World Series in 1977.  Mixed in with the baseball is the Ed Koch race for mayor, the Son of Sam, and the violence that existed in NYC that very hot summer.  A great watch for baseball fans and non-fans alike.  John Turturro plays Billy Martin, and Oliver Platt is George Steinbrenner.

The Onion Movie:  This might just be the funniest movie out today.  The Onion newspaper and the onion online are fake-news masters, with some of the funniest writing around, and they have assembled a hilarious cast, which will be terrific if they don’t take themselves seriously.  But can Steven Seagal really not take himself seriously?

Weeds Season Three:  Pot-dealing soccer mom is back for third season.  Mayhem and laughs will ensue!

Mannix:  Season One (4/10):  Mike Connors is very good as Mannix, a private detective who works for a giant corporate firm doing battle against a giant corporate crime empire, but the whole show feels very dated.  May have been good in the 60s, but it just doesn’t play today.

Normal:  Three strangers struggle for control as they confront their roles in a tragic accident some years earlier.  Stars Carrie-Ann Moss.  Could go either way.

The Animation Show Volume 3 (7/10):  Although it is hosted by Beavis and Butthead, and put together by Mike Judge, this collection of animated short films is more artistic than crude.  Solid viewing for the art-film people.

Also out tomorrow:

Amateurs, The			American Crude
	Andromeda Strain, The			Chansons D’amour, Les
	Entrance, The			Go Diego Go!: Great Gorilla!
	Kinky Killers			Rescue Me: The Complete Fourth Season
	VeggieTales: Lessons from the Sock Drawer			War of the Living Dead

Rambo (7/10):  The fourth installment in the muscles-and-big-guns series that got worse with each of the first three episodes.  You won’t know you missed this crap until you watch this crap again.  And then you will wonder how you went 20 years without it.

Grace Is Gone (8/10):  A poweful, heartfelt movie about a family torn apart by the death of their mother in Iraq.  John Cusack is terrific as the father, and so is Shelan O’Keefe as his 12-year-old daughter who becomes something of a caretaker to her father as the embark on a road trip.

Cleaner (2/10):  Samuel L. Jackson and Eva Mendes star along with Ed Harris and Luis Guzman in a cop movie that is garbage.  Never trust Ed Harris or Eva Mendes!  And Luis Guzman and Sam Jackson will star in anything.  This movie is…anything.

All Hat (3/10):  A Canadian film that fails in many ways.  It’s heart is in the right place, but it’s too simple, too boring, and too all-over-the-place.

Darfur Now (8/10):  A star-studded cast, including Don Cheadle, George Clooney, Arnold Schwarzennegger, Hilary Clinton, and John McCain, among many others, talk about the most pressing human rights situation in the world right now, Darfur.  This documentary is getting rave reviews.

Jackass Presents:  Mat Hoffman’s Tribute To Evel Knievel (5/10):  Johnny Knoxville yammers on for thirty minutes while fifteen minutes worth of stunts actually take place.  The connection to Evel Knievel himself is…tenuous.  But it’s worth it just for the no-parachute sky diving stunt.

Simon Says:  Horror movie starring the always-creepy Crispin Glover, as a bunch of teens get knocked off by some demented brothers in the woods.  This does not at all sound familiar.

Flashpoint (7/10):  Donnie Yen and a bunch of other solid Asian actors for some seriously bad-ass kung-fu, UFC fighting and hockey fighting, along with a ton of gunplay and something of a decent story.

Shelter:  A surfer begins to discover he is gay in this indie drama.  No actors I have ever heard of star in it.

Nightmare Detective (7/10):  Japanese horror movie that is very effective, particularly in atmosphere and mood.  Scary, creepy and very very dark.  It all takes place in people’s nightmares, and even bikes and bridges become frightening.

Waiter:  A waiter is dissatisfied with his job and his home life, and again I haven’t heard of any of these actors.

The Fall of the Roman Empire Special Edition (8/10):  Three-disc special edition of one of the better epic films from the 1960s.  Alec Guinness, Sophia Loren and Stephen Boyd star in this massive, impressive spectacle.

Holocaust (10/10):  The famous 1978 TV miniseries starring Meryl Streep and James Woods is as powerful and devastating as ever.  Requires a commitment - it is seven and a half hours of video - but this is as important a document about the holocaust as Schindler’s List.  A true classic.

Degrassi:  The Next Generation Season 6 (6/10):  A surprisingly watchable season of this TV show.  It seems watered down from that original Degrassi that was so famous and popular, mostly because there are way more hot chicks in this version.  But solid writing and decent acting in places.

Gunsmoke Season 2 Volume 2 (8/10):  One of the longest-running TV shows in history, still a Western classic.  Guns and bullets and frontier justice and Marshall Matt Dillon and barstool wisdom equals good times.

The Invaders Season One (5/10):  Sci-fi series from the 60s starring Roy Thinnes as the only man on Earth who is aware of an alien invasion.  It lasted only a season and a half, so you get pretty much the entire thing on this disc.

Rawhide Season Three (7/10):  Clint Eastwood as Rowdy Yates, when he was a young, young man.  Cattle-driving and gunfights and frontier justice and Clint Eastwood.  It all spells awesome!

National Treasure 2:  Book of Secrets:  If you liked the first one, you are likely a poor judge of quality in movies.  And if you are a poor judge of quality in movies, then perhaps you will like this sequel as well.  Look for Nicholas Cage to continue sucking.

Strange Wilderness (2/10):  All of Adam Sandler’s friends get together, yet again, to make yet another movie based on a script written by seven-year-olds.  Poop and fart jokes, and animals attacking people.  Garbage.

The Air I Breathe:  Forest Whitaker,  Kevin Bacon, Emile Hirsch and Andy Garcia are cool.  Sarah Michelle Gellar and Brendan Fraser are not.  Which means that based on the cast, there are 2/3rds of a reason to watch.

Diary of the Dead (7/10):  For all the zombie fanatics who couldn’t get enough of the Romero movies (Night of the Living Dead, Dawn of the Dead, Day of the Dead, Land of the Dead…noticing a theme here?)  This one stands up with the rest.

The Walker:  Cool cast including Ned Beatty, Lauren Bacall, Woody Harrelson, Willem Dafoe, and Kristen Scott Thomas.  Political thriller, could be very good.

Penn and Teller:  Bullshit!  Season Five (7/10):  A fairly decent TV show that takes on some of the most cherished myths in the world with the humour and insight of Penn and Teller, who are famous magicians.

National Lampoon presents:  Cattle Call:  Another franchise that can seemingly churn out movies at will, just like Adam Sandler’s Happy Madison company.  I guess anyone could make forty movies a year if you didn’t care whether any of them were good.

Exes and Ohs Complete First Season (5/10):  Lesbian sit-com starring lots of hot chicks.  Yeah…but it sounds a lot better than it is.  Smacks of Canadian, and pushes no envelopes.

Who’s Your Monkey:  Over the course of a single night, four childhood friends kill a drug dealer, rescue animals, dispose of a dead body and discover the unbreakable bonds of friendship. This film is a hilarious, irreverent, heartfelt comedy full of laughs, surprises and a lot of monkey business!  And…it stars Newman from Seinfeld.  Whee.

Gomer Pyle, U.S.M.C. Season Four (4/10):  Not only did this show exist, it apparently had at least four seasons!  What is your major malfunction, Private Pyle?!

Grindstone Road:  The inimitable Fairuza Balk stars in a movie where she is either haunted by ghosts, or she is losing her mind!  Uh-oh!

Short Circuit:  That 1986 movie, with the cute little robot that does cute little stuff with cute little Steve Gutenberg.  Finally released onto DVD!  After SUCH a long wait!

Darkest Hour
Sight
Vexille
Hannah Takes The Stairs
They Wait

And now, some dots I can’t seem to get rid of.

Untraceable (3/10):  Diane Lane is a front-line FBI operative in the war on cyber crime.  Remember Sandra Bullock in The Net?  Yeah, me either.  This one will be forgotten in a week or so, it’s terrible.

Mad Money (3/10):  Queen Latifah, Katie Holmes and Diane Keaton star in an absolutely putrid crmie caper.  Ted Danson and a few others up the suck factor.

Walk All Over Me (3/10):  Leelee Sobieski is a dominatrix caught in a crime ring.  Dominatrix - good.  Crime ring - good.  Leelee Sobieski -good.  Tricia Helfer - also good.  This could be good.  But it isn’t.

The Great Debaters (8/10):  Denzel Washington and Forrest Whitaker and Denzel Whitaker are all terrific in this movie about the Jim Crow south, race relations, and debate teams.  Formulaic, but very good.

Youth Without Youth (4/10):  Francis Ford Coppola directs this movie about Tim Roth, who is struck by a bolt of lightning and begins to age backwards.  Which means he gets pursued by the Nazis.

I’m Not There (9/10):  The best movie released this week.  Bob Dylan is re-imagined as six different people, including a young black kid, a woman, and an aging western outlaw.  For hardcore Dylan fans, mostly.  Check out my review for a guide to watching this.

The Cottage:  Brothers are holed up in a cottage, with their kidnap victim, when horror takes place.  Axe-wielding neighbours and gore.

Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade Special Edition (8/10):  Still amazing after all these years.  Connery and Ford are terrific together.  Also some excellent special features.

Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom Special Edition (6/10):  The worst of the original trilogy, but still worth purchasing as part of the box set.

Raiders of the Lost Ark Special Edition (10/10):  The all-time classic on DVD again, this time with more great special features.  Worth revisiting, especially if you have kids who have yet to see it.

Numb:  Matthew Perry meets a perfect girl and goes to a therapist to help him work out his anxiety problems.  Sounds…awful.

Backyardigans High Flying Adventures (4/10):  The Backyardigans are a cow, a moose, a hippo, and some other animals that don’t live in my backyard sing some songs and entertain some small children.

Alien Agent:  A lawman from another galaxy must stop an invading force from building a gateway to planet Earth.  Stars Billy Zane.  YES!  Billy Zane…

Drawn Together Season 3 (7/10):  Ignore what you may have seen on the TV trailers.  This series is actually quite intelligent, and hilarious.

The Land Before Time:  Through the Eyes of a Spiketail:  Yet another entry in this interminable series for children.  With a spiketail!

Mission: Impossible Season 4 (6/10):  The terrific original series which is way better than any of those incredibly lousy Tom Cruise movie remakes.

The Ten Commandments (3/10):  A virtually shot-for-shot remake of the Heston 1956 epic, with gigantic parts cut out and cheap animation, dumbed down for kids and starring Christian Slater as the voice of Moses.

Inside (4/10):  A French splatter-horror film with buckets of blood and a hottie who uses scissors to cut a baby out of a pregnant woman.

 Long Day’s Journey Into Night (6/10):  Well-acted, well-staged Canadian filming of the Eugene O’Neill play about family bonds and dysfunction.  But three hours of dialogue in just one room can be…pretty boring.

Lots of garbage this week!  Check it out…

P.S. I Love You (4/10):  Gerard Butler and Hilary Swank star in a romantic movie involving a dead guy.  Butler is dead, but he has left her a series of notes telling her about love…or something…ugh.

Over Her Dead Body:  Paul Rudd and Eva Longoria star in a romantic movie involving a dead girl.  Longoria is dead, and she is still jealous, so she haunts Rudd’s new girlfriend…ugh.

First Sunday (3/10):  Ice Cube and Tracey Morgan team up to commit armed robbery against a curch.  This is meant to be a comedy, from what I understand.

The Hottie and the Nottie (0/10):  Paris Hilton’s gigantic movie release that was in theatres for less than a week and earned less than $1,000.00.  She’s hot, and her friend is ugly.  Get it?

The Orphanage (7/10):  Not too scary, but creepy and effective and wonderfully filmed and acted.  It’s like the Peter Pan story, only told by a morbid, gothic maniac…who isn’t Michael Jackson.  Best release of the week.

Saawariya:  An Indian musical.  A tender, romantic Indian musical.  It’s about two people and their obsession with each other after a chance encounter lasts four nights.  With singing.

Ace of Hearts:  Dean Cain!  Yesss.  Not only does this movie star Dead Cain, but he plays the father of a “junior sleuth” daughter, who sets out to prove the innocence of - their dog.  And, best of all - this movie is “based on the beloved Reader’s Digest story”!  Oh, my goodness.  This is a must-see!

Emmanuel’s Gift:  Might be cool - a documentary about a disabled orphan in Africa with a termendously inspirational story - if it didn’t involve Robin Williams and wasn’t narrated by Oprah.

For One More Day:  A man on the verge of suicide is visited by the ghost of his dead mother who gives him a reprieve for the day, and shows him…his life…reasons to live…it’s like A Christmas Carol crossed with Leaving Las Vegas.  Only without a hooker.  And with Ellen Burstyn.

The Last Hour:  DMX, the rapper, stars with Michael Madsen, the B-actor, in a movie where a bunch of people are locked in a house and have only one hour to live.  And they have to fight each other.  Or something.  Like Enter the Dragon with an egg-timer.

Love’s Unfolding Dream:  Judging by the picture on the cover of this DVD, the title is not meant in an ironic, or tongue-in-cheek sort of way.  And it’s called Love’s Unfolding Dream.  I don’t even want to describe the plot here.  I just want to stick my head in a beehive.

Max and Ruby:  Max’s Present:  Max and Ruby are bunnies.  They learn a lesson about love and respect from a “very troublesome brother”.  Sounds like a blast.

Speed Racer:  The Next Generation:  A 66-minute movie made after the original series, out just in time for the movie’s big-screen release.  The son of the original Speed Racer, who has gone missing sets out to find him.  Good times.

Steel City:  America Ferrara (Ugly Betty) stars with some other no-name actors in a movie about a young boy whose dad is put into prison.  And he has to cope.  Deep.

Trailer Park Boys:  Season 7 (8/10):  Bubbles steals Patrick Swayze’s model train, and Ricky and Julian use it to smuggle drugs across the border with Sebastian Bach.  Hilarious stuff.

African American Lives Volume 2:  Henry Louis Gates, Jr. returns as series host to guide notable African Americans on a search for their ancestry. Genealogical investigations and DNA analysis help Maya Angelou, Bliss Broyard, Don Cheadle, Morgan Freeman, Peter Gomes, Kathleen Henderson, Linda Johnson Rice, Tom Joyner, Jackie Joyner-Kersee, Chris Rock and Tina Turner discover where they come from and who they are.  PBS.

The 4400:  Fourth Season (4/10):  Over the past century, thousands of people have gone missing.  Suddenly and inexplicably, 4400 of them are returned to Earth…and alien conspiracies abound.  Fourth season of a TV series about which I have heard nothing, and which has since been cancelled.  Not that good.

The Invaders Season One (5/10):  1967 Series, first season, about a guy who knows there are alien invaders on Earth, but the rest of the world doesn’t believe him!

The Golden Compass (5/10):  Based on the His Dark Materials series of books for kids, this movie is kind of a mess, kind of boring, and seems disturbingly unoriginal.  But it makes wing-nut hardcore Catholics angry, so it can’t be all bad.

27 Dresses:  Katherine Heigl, who is very gorgeous and recently starred in Knocked Up, now plays…a bridesmaid who never gets to be a bride…and ruins all the guy-cred she had with Knocked Up by making us rightfully cringe at the mention of this movie.

The Diving Bell and the Butterfly (9/10):  Absolutely magnificent.  The true story of a man who dictated his memoirs simply by blinking his eyelid after suffering a stroke that left him paralyzed.  Far more exciting than it sounds.

Hero Wanted (2/10):  Ray Liotta, who will appear in ANY movie ever, teams up with Cuba Gooding Jr, who should not EVER appear in any more movies.  Revenge and bank robberies.  Possibly also crap.  OK, quite likely.

Cheers, Season Nine (8/10):  One of the all-time greatest TV shows with one of it’s best seasons.  The introduction of the owner of Melville’s Restaurant upstairs is a beautiful touch.

How She Move:  When her older sister dies from a drug overdose, a teen-ager must leave private school and go to a gang-dominated high school.  She then finds solace in…step dancing!  Wait, haven’t I seen, and hated, this exact movie many many times before?

 The Big Gay Sketch Show, Season 2 (4/10):  Just being gay is not in itself funny.  Liza Minelli jokes somehow seem kind of old in the world of gay humour by now, no?

This Thing of Ours:  Could be cool.  Many of the actors most associated with gangster movies in history appear together - James Caan, Frank Vincent, Vincent Pastore - to pull off the “biggest heist in mafia history”.  OK, it’ll be cheesy.  But cool actors.

Young Indiana Jones Volume 3:  The Years of Change (6/10):  Ten discs.  Each disc is two TV-episodes crammed together into a two-hour “movie”, which feels like…two one-hour episodes.  But the special features will be fantastic for kids, and teach an awful lot about history.  So if you ever wanted your kids to get into Edith Wharton…

The Wire:  The Complete Fourth Season:  This will have Doc captured by the TV for the next week.  Looks like I’ll have to wait until next week to golf with him.

CSI:  The Complete Seventh Season (5/10):  They’ve kinda quit trying to be cool, and gone for gimmicks.  Sean Patrick Flannery (of Young Indiana Jones) appears, as do Danny Bonaduce and the always luminous Kevin Federline.

Dead Man’s Bounty:  A mysterious stranger rides into a dusty border town with a dead body, trying to collect the reward on the man, but then loses that money, AND the body, in a poker game with the drunken local sherriff.  Polish movie done in English.

Also out:

Beyond the Golden Compass
Moondance Alexander