Okay, so it isn’t Napoleon Dynamite. Frankly, what could be? Jared Hess and his uniquely named wife Jerusha delivered a devastatingly original take on human folly with their look at a bunch of Idaho eccentrics, and very few films could match its amiable instant karma. So it’s unfair to grade Nacho Libre by any other standards that it’s own. Sure, Hess shows a great deal of cinematic sameness with his food-oriented opening and random blackout gags (what was with that corncob to the eye, anyway). Still, as a look at the Luchadores of Mexico and the way in which they infiltrate and influence the everyday life of the country’s sun-dried citizenry, this is a clever, cute little movie. And while it doesn’t have Napoleon Dynamite’s wealth of quotable dialogue (it’s a safe bet no spelling bee-er will be giving a shout out to pals with that “stretchy pants” line), it does contain enough clever moments to warrant a real recommendation.

At the center of course is Jack Black, and for many, he stands as the reason the film flies and/or fails. Too bad the comedic crackpot didn’t have more to work with. Nacho is really not much of a character. He is a dreamer, and a loveable loser, but his is a persona made up almost exclusively of desire and doughiness. Black deserves kudos for showing off his bud-stage man boobs and bountiful belly. The sight of Nacho running around the ring like an escaped Easter ham is hilarious. Indeed, all the moments in the ring are wonderful, Hess helming nice non-formulaic sequences of what are typical Tinsel Town “moments”. I especially liked the statistical rundown on every competitor before the big wrestle-off, with some of the profiles being incredible witty. Still, a lot of people like Jack in wildman wastoid mode, his over the top tendencies and egomaniacal mugging a staple of his standard cinematic shtick. Here, he is subdued and sort of sweet, allowing his love of the masked machismo that comes with being a Luchadore drive his dimensions. As a result, Black is not always funny, but he is always winning.

Paired up with a Hispanic stick figure named Hector Jimenez, we get the perfect comedy duo. It’s just too bad the Hesses and co-writer Mike White (of Chuck & Buck/School of Rock fame) can’t give them more to do. Indeed, toward the end, Esqueleto (Spanish for “skeleton”) goes from being part of the action to merely a bystander. He stands along the sidelines as our porcine hero walks away with the rest of the film. Then there is the love story – or, would it be better to call it an “almost” love story – between Nacho and new nun Sister Encarnacion. Ana de la Reguera looks like a cross between Selma Hayek and Penelope Cruz, but her role is so underwritten that she functions less as a romantic interest for Nacho and more like a mandated female face amongst a sea of grimy gauchos. Indeed, some folks have complained that Nacho Libre is racist in its depiction of Mexican poverty and ethnic stereotypes. And while one can see a small dash of Bill Dana’s Jose Jimenze in Black’s bilingual buffoonery, it’s done with such innocence that it’s not all that shocking.

Indeed, if there is anything unsettling about the film, it’s the thought of how much better it could be. The legend of the Luchadores is ripe fodder for far out funny business (anyone who’s watched an El Santo film can testify to this) and the situation created (orphanage chef fighting for his charges) has its own easily explorable charms. But Hess seems smitten with his Dynamite dynamic of superficiality with a spark. When he focused on a group of groan-inducing geeks, it seemed to work. But here, with so much history inherent in the material, we definitely feel the short shrift. For all its minor faults, Nacho Libre doesn’t deserve the critical drubbing it’s getting. It seems that, for many, the past efforts of the talented individuals in front of and behind the camera created expectations that this quirky little comedy couldn’t possibly meet. Taken on its own though, its definitely one of the better offerings of this so far subpar summer.

6.5 out of 10

Want more Summer Movie Madness? Come to Bill's Summer Blog-Buster Overview
Click Here

It’s pretty unfair. As a matter of fact, it’s downright despicable when you think about it. Pixar has been producing certified creative magic for nearly twenty years, and yet the recent dogpile to downplay the equally impressive Cars is flabbergasting. I, for one, just don’t see it. What flaws did the other critics see here that I did not? What level of cinematic skill were they hoping for that the movie failed to live up to? Granted, I still think The Incredibles is the best thing the studio has ever done, an unexpected turn into superhero mythology that avoided the standard anthropomorphic objects (toys, vehicle) or entities (fish, bugs) to reinvent the language of 3D animation. Yet apparently with all the memories of Finding Nemo and Monsters Inc. floating around in their brain, my fellow film reviewers just couldn’t cotton to automobiles with attitude.

Granted, this is the most relaxed movie Pixar has ever made, a real attempt at capturing the slower, subtler style of full length feature animation from the past. Sure, the movie starts off like a rocket, and ends with the same sensational racing car frenzy. And in between are nice riffs on NASCAR, celebrity, marketing and selfishness. But once we get to Radiator Springs (in a convoluted manner that may be the film’s only flaw), the character development perfectly meshes with the narrative drive to put the brakes to the pace. Frankly, I can’t think of a single middle act moment I’d sacrifice for the sake of time. The tractor tipping was well down and highly imaginative, the romanticized look at a Route 66 from a fantasy bygone era is brilliantly evocative. All the bonding situations work, and the sequence were Paul Newman’s Hudson shows the speed demon Lighting McQueen how to properly negotiate a sharp turn is just iconic.

Even the elements I thought wouldn’t work did. Larry the Cable Guy looks like roadkill incarnate in his Blue Collar guise, but as Mater the tow truck, his goofy redneck charms are infectious. So are the semi-stereotypical sections with the Hispanic lowrider Ramone, and Italian tire merchants Luigi and Guido, and the confused old Model T curio shop owner Lizzie. Perhaps the reason reviewers find fault in this film is that they aren’t noticing the abundance of detail here, those tiny moments that make Pixar product shine. I especially liked the VW ‘bugs’, the road cone motel, and the rock formations that look like classic cars (and classic car sculptures). This is obviously a movie for those in love with the myth of the American highway, the notion that the open road offers infinite possibilities. It’s freedom and adventure, all just a glorious gas and gulp away. Many of the vistas offered by director John Lassiter and the rest of his team really illustrate this ideal.

As usual, Cars leaves one wanting more. I, for one, would love to know what makes George Carlin’s organic gas so “special”, or why bad guy Chick Hicks (a classic voice work turn by Michael Keaton) is so angry and envious. With almost all the focus on our red racer Lightning McQueen, some of the subplots do seem shortchanged, but they aren’t under-developed, just asking to be expanded and enjoyed. After an initial selection of below-average blockbusters that promised excitement, only to inspire ennui, Cars becomes the first film to live up to – and in my case at least, supercede - the standard Hollywood hype. While it may not seem like it now, this will wind up another cartoon classic from a company that, apparently, can produce nothing but timeless treats.

8 out of 10

Want more Summer Movie Madness? Come to Bill's Summer Blog-Buster Overview
Click Here

It’s official: The Omen remake is the worst movie I have seen so far this summer. It’s dull, soulless and without a single significant redeeming feature. Anyone with fond memories of the original should steer clear of this turgid excuse for a cash grab. There is nothing hear that you haven’t seen before, heard before, or snickered at before. If you thought the shot-for-shot redux of Psycho was pointless, you ain’t see nothing yet. Frankly there are more problems here than just over familiarity. Thirty years ago, the premise of The Omen seemed fresh, and intriguing. People actually feared the concept of The Devil. Now, with Da Vinci coding up Jesus’ sex life and religion regularly making its way into the worlds of politics and pundits, the arrival of the Antichrist feels like an anticlimactic Fox News Headline. We’ve been told he is coming for 20 plus years. Now that he’s arrived, it’s a lot like the evil Emperor’s new clothes.

As I feared, both Liev Schreiber and Julia Stiles are woefully miscast as the well-placed power couple Richard and Katherine Thorne. They are so young looking, as a matter of fact, that the movie has to make several obvious nods to the fact. They toss in nepotism, and a baptism made relationship to the President to argue for the mid 30’s Pappa Thorne as Ambassador to England. Sadly, this is not the sole bit of sloppiness on the part of scribe David Seltzer (he of the original Omen screenplay) and director John Moore. After helming the less than stellar Flight of the Phoenix remake, Moore proves that, as cinematic skills go, he specializes in mundane-en-scene. This is one of the least alive films in recent memory, bereft of even a moment of forward momentum. The narrative takes itself so seriously that it permanently plods along, never achieving a gonzo genre groove. Unlike the Texas Chainsaw and Hills Have Eyes revamps, which explore the movie from the myth backwards, this rote recollection of the first film is just a series of shots leading to a thoroughly predicable finale.

Then there is the horrible hellboy himself, the haughtily named Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick. He looks less like an actual child and more like someone’s idea of what a brat actor playing the Devil’s spawning should be. His dark eyes and Moe bowl haircut can’t hide the fact that this kid can’t act. His entire range of emotion consists of scrunching up his face and attempting to glower. Even when he’s pitching his preposterous hissy as the family pulls up to a cathedral, Moore hides his half-baked histrionics with music video style editing and hand-held hackwork. Thankfully, a couple of the performers acquit themselves. Pete Postlethwaite is so determined in his turn as the about-to-be-skewered Father Brennan that you almost start to care. Almost. Then David Thewlis channels his own inner David Warner, turning soon-to-be-headless photographer Keith Jennings into a near three-dimensional entity. Nearly.

Yet it’s all in service of something done ten times better three decades ago. When Gregory Peck squinted his eyes and looked skeptical, there was power in his presence. Mr. Schreiber is just a wet behind the ears wuss. When Lee Remick died, she got the spectacular send off her long-suffering mother character deserved. Here, Julie Stiles just convulses a little under Mia Farrow’s aged corpse hands (as Ms. Baylock, Farrow is just fair) before simply fading away. Thewlis’s Mediterranean Mohawk has a nice gory gratuity to it, but everything else is sullied and soiled by the overabundance of exposition. Nothing ruins a gag faster, be it in humor or horror, than someone having to explain it to you. But in the case of The Omen, we already knew the tale. The constant repetition and reminders are just onerous overkill.

1 out of 10

Want more Summer Movie Madness? Come to Bill's Summer Blog-Buster Overview
Click Here

It took Walt Disney and his posthumous House of Mouse, the Warner Brothers and anyone else in the cartoon business nearly 70 years to really kill off hand drawn animation. Yet it’s hard to say what is more depressing – the end of said art form as a viable entertainment entity, or the supersonic manner in which CGI is headed toward the same filmic fate. By now, your 3-D microchip movie has become so formulaic that other genres – like romantic comedies and horror films – are getting jealous of their obvious recipes for semi-success. In fact, even the most illiterate cinephile can list the necessary elements for any Fox/Pixar/Dreamworks product. Take some anthropomorphic entities (cars, animals, toys, fish), load up the script with dozens of dime store pop culture references, hire several superstars for a little voice over stunt casting, create an over the top action scene or three, and then layer in the lame substandard rock tunes (or if you’re lucky, Randy Newman’s LA shuffle songcraft). Viola! Instant Shrek! When I decided to see Over the Hedge this week (sticking fast to my “No Aniston” manifesto of last week), what I expected was the typical CG stuff. What I got instead was a confusing combination of big screen fun and in-theater frustration.

As a movie, Over the Hedge is leaps and bounds better than previous Dreamworks drek like Shark Tale, or the mediocre Madagascar. Perhaps this is because it is based on a comic strip, and therefore, the creative team has to balance the need to stay true to the characters while jazzing up the pixel pizzazz to hopefully stimulate the core demographics’ tiny brain. While there is way too much leaning toward the light show here, there are some highly redemptive moments. Gary Shandling is great as the cautious turtle Verne, while Steve Carrell is almost unrecognizable as the hyperactive squirrel Hammy. Eugene Levy and Catherine O’Hara do a nice Fargo accent riff with their porcupine characters, while Wanda Sykes sounds weirdly out of place as the wood’s first ghetto skunk. Still, she’s endearing in her seduction scene with a burly suburban cat. About the only individual here who sounds generic is that blockbuster big deal Bruce Willis. His rotten raccoon RJ is bland, really nothing more than a story catalyst whose illogical actions at the beginning of the film fill a pedestrian requirement to get the narrative going. Frankly, the plot didn’t need the pissed-off bear angle to work. Having the creatures figure out how to fend for themselves as suburbia envelops and overwhelms them would have been good enough. Instead, we’re back to the old ‘goal/mission’ mandates of the modern cartoon canon, substituting spectacle for subtlety.

Another problem arrives with the human element in the plot. The deranged homeowner who hates the creatures is Cruella DeVille without the style or wicked wit, and the bumbling exterminator (sorry, ‘Verminator’) is underwritten and very poorly executed. He’s like a refrigerator with a comb-over. Indeed, the entire suburban setting looks boxy and mundane, offering none of the artistry or aesthetic we except from the CGI genre. Only Nick Notle’s angry bear makes any impact. But if you’re looking for the real villain here, it is not associated with the film itself. It’s the parents who insist upon using the cinema as a way station for their ill-mannered and ADD addled brats. I had stopped going to family fare back in the early ‘90s, when children would chime in with their less than intelligent running commentaries during (typically, Disney) films. You’ve really never experienced Aladdin or The Lion King until you’ve had a sold-out theater filled with smelly, sticky children shouting out every line and shrieking every song like a dying donkey with no ‘off’ switch. Since those heinous experiences I have refused to experience anything animated or G rated in a theater.

At first, it looked like Over the Hedge would be different. The seats were mostly empty as the movie started. But leave it to a clan of SUV-driving dunderheads to waltz into the screening, arms overloaded with sugar-coated kiddie samplers, and immediately take up residence right in front of my wife and I. There was row after row of available seating, but since they decided to travel in a herd, they needed an entire section to themselves (what they really needed was some family planning, but I digress). Anyway, the entire movie was marred by their incessant talking, non-stop fidgeting, intermittent cell phone activation and frequent requests to visit the restroom. At certain moments I could drown it all out and enjoy the film. At others, all I could hear was the sound of underdeveloped brains with no internal monologue chattering away like monkeys with manic-depressive disorder. Joy.

As a result, Over the Hedge was a very mixed bag for me. I liked the sequence where Hammy pounded caffeine and the entire cosmos slowed down as he went about his successful subterfuge. I also enjoyed several of the skunk jokes, including the moment where the potent rodent finally fired off her stink bomb. But much of the material is aimed at the toddler to tween set, and based on the amount of seat shifting they did, they found much of the movie like a visit to the ear doctor. While it can’t compare to Pixar’s best – and frankly, what could? - it does have its definite delights. Once Cars hits theaters this week, this middling success will more than likely slink off the cultural landscape, waiting for its eventual DVD revival. It can be happy with being literally half-hearted while moving us ever closer to CGI’s final resting place.

5 out of 10

Want more Summer Movie Madness? Come to Bill's Summer Blog-Buster Overview
Click Here

When is a spectacle not very special, an epic rather anemic? When it’s the final film in the so-so serialization of the X-Men comics onto the silver screen. Fans foamed when they learned that their beloved Bryan Singer wouldn’t be helming this final installment in the seemingly stalled franchise, but they really needn’t have worried. Not even their much admired moviemaker could have saved this script. Someone in Fox’s story department must have decided that the first two films were just too packed with context, and jettisoned most of the political and social significance from the storyline. Then they filled in the gaps with mutants - more and more mutants. Frankly, the desire to overload the narrative with new faces is just one of several cinematic missteps X-Men: The Last Stand makes (and, in all honestly, a flaw flowing through all three films). No, all new director Brett Ratner brings to the mix is a level of superficiality that a concept as complex as this can’t possibly survive on.

Dealing with the influx of newbies for a moment, only Kelsey Grammar seems convinced he is in a storyline of substance. His Beast, woefully underdeveloped and underrepresented, cuts an intriguing swath in the scenes he is in. But we don’t learn enough about him, his motives and his mindset, to welcome him wholly into the X-Men fold. He often feels like a hold-over from a different film. Then there are Magneto’s new companions. Pyro, otherwise known as the snot-nosed irritant Aaron Stanford, is like that know-it-all asshole who sat behind you in Math class, answering every question correctly as he incessantly kicked the back of your seat. He needs a beat down, big time, along with a huge cup of bad boy comeuppance. While this may all be a compliment to Mr. Stanford’s performance, I for one wished he would choke on his own conflagration and DIE!. As for the rest of the bad guys, they look like they dropped out of a primitive performance art version of Rent. Their tattooed and pierced personages look like throwbacks to a Goth jam band festival, not a futuristic force of evil. And poor Vinnie Jones, reduced to playing a boulder with a British accent. How the mighty have fallen.

(And could someone tell me why the critical community is so cow-eyed over Ellen Page’s good girl Kitty Pride. So she passes through walls. Big friggin’ deal. I killed a gopher once with a stick.)

But the main problem with the film, one that keeps it from reaching the highest elevations of popcorn entertainment, is its lack of real emotional resonance. Several MAJOR characters bite the big one in this film - on both sides of the ethical equation - and yet there is not a single second where these deaths/transformations have a viable, visceral impact. When Jean Gray returns from her watery grave, it’s a CGI sequence out of the lake-bound version of The Perfect Storm. When another important player disintegrates into a thousand shards of essence, it’s supposed to be a heart-wrenching end for an iconic figure. But the sentiment is stillborn, falling flat within the whirlwind Ratner is constantly creating. The action set pieces all suffer from this sense of the staged. The final standoff between man and mutant, occurring in one of the most illogical locales in all of filmdom, delivers none of the thrilling satisfaction we expect from such cinematic fireworks. We want to be wowed and awe-struck. Instead, we are struck with how ordinary it all is.

Granted, the movie is mildly entertaining, never truly curling up and turning into the corrupt cowflop the fans had feared (though that doesn’t seem to be the case for the truly devoted. Apparently, this movie bites bug butt from their graphic novel perspective), and in Jean Gray’s angry alter ego The Phoenix, Famke Jassen has finally found a role to fit her arch androgyny. Why Wolverine and Cyclops go ga-ga over her rather masculine mannerisms is one of the trilogy’s biggest mysteries. Hugh Jackman makes the impossible-to-kill triple blade boy a sure symbol of half-baked heroism. It will be interesting to see how the planned spin-off for his manmade mutant character comes off. Ian McKellen and Patrick Stewart trade Old Vic volleys - and age defying make-up work as part of a pre-credits flashback - and Ratner does indeed keep the franchise’s future afloat without doing any real damage. No, the desire to rush out another X-Men movie before the storyline was secure is why the third times not quite the charm. Instead, we have a perfunctory piece of summer film fluff that ends this cinematic phase of the X-Men with a decided whimper, not the big badass bang everyone had hoped for.

5 out of 10

Want more Summer Movie Madness? Come to Bill's Summer Blog-Buster Overview
Click Here

Someone needs to stop Akiva Goldsman before he writes again. Already announced to mangle and maul the brilliant Richard Matheson novel I Am Legend (I’ll just skip the whole problematic “Fresh Prince” angle for now), his is a career coated in such mediocrity that the notion that he owns an Academy Award for his piss poor efforts is enough to void Oscar’s entire reason to exist. While he may be the nicest man in the history of the world, bathing orphaned kittens in his spare time, he just can’t write a coherent/compelling screenplay. Want proof? Look at his IMDb listing. Anyone responsible for Practical Magic, Batman and Robin AND the big screen bungle of Lost in Space deserves karate chops, not kudos.

It’s no surprise then that Goldsman’s ham-fisted helming of Dan Brown’s blockbuster The Da Vinci Code is what ultimately sinks this excessively expositional stinker. For a film based on an incredibly interesting premise (I especially like the central notion of Christianity being formed by the Word of God…as determined by Emperor Constantine and his Council of Nicea), Goldsman, and the equally uninspired director Ron “Opie Cunningham” Howard craft a thriller with no thrills, a mystery whose main tenets have been long known by the viewing public, and a transcontinental chase that looks like it was filmed on the streets of Epcot, not the major cities of the world. If it wasn’t for the unshaved faces of the numerous noxious Gardiens walking around with questionable personal hygiene, we’d never know we were in France.

The Da Vinci Code is a huge, unbridled mess, a movie that doesn’t understand the simplest of things - like how to tell a story. Knowing full well that ANY adaptation of Brown’s bombshell is going to meet with criticism and carping, Goldsman and Howard attempt the impossible - cramming every narrative nook and cranny from the novel into a 150 minute film. As a result, these plot point pit stops really ruin whatever forward momentum the storyline tries to build. As part of these purposeful pauses, we get flashbacks, character backstory, explanatory asides and routine revelations, all rendered in what can best be described as a desaturated nod to Gore Verbinksi’s The Ring. Whenever we need context in this confusing, catawampus waste of time, Howard drains out the color and gives us a sneak peek at all the history/humanity/happenstance behind the often baffling brouhaha. It’s not long before the film starts to lap itself, re-explaining things we already know as characters converse, non stop.

Nothing works here - not the performances, not the “twists”, not the threat of evil from a pasty-faced, self flagellating albino monk. Tom Hanks does an atypical turn as a sleepwalker as scholar, forced to be a passive aggressive member of his own heroics, while Amelie sweetie Audrey Tautou apparently found her character’s motivation by watching various wildlife creatures stare directly into the headlights of oncoming cars. Most critics praise Sir Ian McKellen’s Sir Leigh Fleabag (sorry, ‘Teabing’) as the best thing in the film, but he’s so obvious in his hobbled histrionics that his last act character turn is tired, not thrilling. Indeed, everything about The Da Vinci Code is insular and insipid. Somewhere inside this creaky, crappy film is a real adventure romp waiting to be revealed. Sadly, it’s swamped by fan expectations and the lousy, languid writing of one of Hollywood’s most heinous hacks.

3 out of 10

Want more Summer Movie Madness? Come to Bill's Summer Blog-Buster Overview
Click Here

It seems almost surreal to say this, but Irwin Allen was a stark raving genius. Want proof? Well, look no further than that capsized cruiser called Poseidon and then match it against Mr. Lost in Space’s 1972 epic of the same name (sort of). Even with all of Hollywood’s CGI shuffling, and an audience testing process that should have micromanaged the remake down to a dozen or so effective set-pieces, this movie flounders like its director’s post-Das Boot career. Oh sure, Woflgang Peterson delivered In the Line of Fire and Air Force One during the decades since his German U-boat drama showed us the other side of World War II. But when you ratchet up substantial stinkers like Enemy Mine, Troy and Outbreak, your Emperor-like new clothes are bound to be revealed.

In an industry loaded with certifiably dumb ideas, this one didn’t seem so stupid - at least, not at first. Peterson, a decent action director, would take one of the most novel notions for a disaster pic of all time, update it with the latest in studio wizardry, and deliver it to a demographic still zygoted when the original offered its Oscar caliber cast. It’s amazing to look back and realize that five out of the ten leads in the maiden voyage of Poseidon all owned Academy gold (Gene Hackman was handed his during production, while Ernest Borgnine, Red Buttons, Shelley Winters and Jack Albertson all had their statuettes at home). The current passenger list, however, is made up of a single award winner (Richard Dreyfus) and several other actors who must have been hanging around the Warner Brothers lot when the project was in pre-production.

Not that a group of Old Vic thespians with Shakespeare around for rewrites could save this waterlogged waste of time. Poseidon is 90 minutes of endless meandering, heroics via happenstance and shoddy F/X work. It’s a film that avoids logic and logistics to make up or modify its rules of survival at any given moments. Characters come and go with reckless abandon, and the action sequences stink of first draft dimensions. Granted, the opening set-piece, where that mighty rogue wave (the PC terminology for the far more racially charged “tidal” wave, apparently) topples the ship has some nice moments, even if the computer generated people look like shoddy stick figures with St. Vitus Dance. And Peterson sure likes to show off his corpses. There are more dead bodies in Poseidon than in any other sinking ship melodrama ever made, and this director loves to languish on their burned, drowned dimensions.

But it all adds up to nothing, or actually, more than nothing. Call it a brisk and breezy summer entertainment - or that most dreaded of post-modern denouncements, the “popcorn” movie - but it doesn’t change the fact that Poseidon sputters when it should sail. Even in his grave, Irwin Allen still knows that you have to have people to root for, otherwise you’re watching the cinematic equivalent of a tour video for the new Poseidon ride at Universal Studios. Sadly, some familiar faces (Dreyfus, the getting mighty creaky Kurt Russell) and forced, formulaic relationships are all we have to go on. By the time we reach the surprisingly stupid finale (featuring the only engine room that can still function after being submerged in salt water for several hours), we just want out - out of the narrative, out of the constant screaming and caterwauling, out of the hackneyed he-man hyperactivity. When something that cost $200 million can make the startlingly awful Beyond the Poseidon Adventure look like a real winner, you know there is something substantially wrong. Poseidon should have been more than just a high tech trick. However, even in this case, technology can’t save our ship.

2 out of 10

Want more Summer Movie Madness? Come to Bill's Summer Blog-Buster Overview
Click Here

Aside from sharing a similar premise, and the same directorial team (The Pang Brothers), The Eye and The Eye 2 are like very creepy oil and highly melodramatic water. The first film, a supernatural spook story about a blind girl given more than just her sight back as the result of a cornea transplant, was geared more toward horror and the macabre. But after wading through the 90 plus minutes of this confusing, convoluted cornjob, we wonder if the main purpose was to terrorize, or to theorize. There is more here about religion, spirituality, life, death, birth and reincarnation than good old fashioned scary movie shock value.

It has to be said that the Pang Brothers can deliver the horrific heebie-jeebies when they want to. There are several scenes in The Eye 2 that mesmerize with their meanness (smashed corpses twitching - and SPEAKING - as they slowly bleed out) and fascinate with their fluidity (most of the ghost glimpses here are excellent). Yet it's all in service of a story that is shockingly moronic. Apparently, Buddhism teaches that individuals close to death/giving birth have the ability to "see" those spirits waiting to be reincarnated. Our heroine, the awfully jittery Joey Cheng (played with irritating antsiness by Qi Shu) can't stand the fact that she's once again unlucky in love. So she attempts suicide in an insane effort at getting some attention. Her ploy doesn't work, and all she ends up with is a newfound ability to see unhappy specters standing around maternity wards and LaMas classes.

At least twice in the film we are told that these spirits mean no real harm, they just want a chance to live again. They do not intend to possess the newborn, or turn them into some manner of Omen-style Hellspawn. But that doesn't keep Joey Cheng from going bugbutt for an hour and thirty minutes. She cries and screams and gnashes her teeth at the sight of the spooks. She goes into moody, dreary funks over finding out she's pregnant, and a phantom's target. And yes, she tries killing herself multiple times, all as a way of (a) still trying to get back at her ex, (b) resolving her own interpersonal conflicts with emotional failure, and (c) to keep a dark haired gal ghoul from slipping into her womb for a little fetus frightening. In between all these hyper-emotional workouts, we get expectant mothers blaring and bleeding, perverted poltergeists peeping on people in toilets and from under tables, and a lot of misguided maternity machinations. The end is particularly perplexing, since it seems to be much ado about nothing - or better yet, much ado about accepting the cosmic circle of life.

Frankly, the only saving grace in The Eye 2 is that we don't have the typical Asian demon doll spastically crawling and croaking at the camera as her black hair flows like foul fettuccini in CGI wonder. True, our apparition here is a baneful brunette with etherealness woven into her afterlife appearances. But she's not really evil. She's just picked the wrong pregnant person to pester. Without a story to get excited about or a twist ending to drag us along, The Eye 2 is bewildering and boring. Ever since Haley Joel Osment made seeing dead people "cool", the notion of looking beyond this reality into the otherworldly plane surrounding us has been a chilling, thrilling idea. The Pang Brothers have enough visual flair to concoct a super suspense shocker. Sadly, this baby birthing bunkum is not it.

Score: 60

Over the last few days, everyone has been strutting and fretting over Time magazine's 100 Greatest Films of All Time Universal Classics Should Be Seen By Everyone Something or Other List. Among the films most maligned (with some begrudging support, mind you) is David Cronenberg's The Fly. I, for one, think this is Big Dave's masterwork, a combination of all the themes the guy loves to sink his goo-loving teeth into. I mean, it has

- the terror of technology run amuk
- the power of love
- the failings of biology
- the question of identity
- the fallacy of playing God
- the notion of sacrifice and salvation

Remove the abundant gore (absolutely necessary to make his point) and The Fly is just a grand tragic love story gone all goopy. The final shot of Geena Davis amongst the carnage is probably one of the single most emotional images ever in a modern horror film.

So leave Brundlefly and his babe alone - and SOMEONE better get a SE of this bad boy out on the market ASAP, or there will be Gibron Hell to pay (and trust me, that ain't pretty).

And so it goes...

:)

BILL

While I normally despise almost everything that passes for entertainment on television (with a few exceptions that I worship with near religious fervor), I admit that I have become completely sucked in and obsessed with Extreme Makeover - Home Edition. I know the show is all sentimental set-up and tear flowing foolishness. I know it purports to do good works for needy families in the name of ratings. I know that, beyond my better judgment, this is manipulation of the highest order. But I can't help it. I'M ADDICTED. It's like magnificent, maudlin crack. The minute Ty and his gang of high-glossed "builders" arrive on the scene, my rather ample ass is glued to the chair. Heck, I even find myself watching the Monday morning quarterbacking ripoff called How'd They Do That?, where all they do is unreel outtakes from the previous night's show.

Dammit, I am PT Barnum's wet dream, being reborn every minute that EM-HE is on the air. Something is seriously wrong with me.

And so it goes...

:)

BILL