PIRATES OF THE CARRIBEAN 2 (2006)

Once I got through this summertime juggernaut, it was hard for me not to hold it up next to Star Wars (the first three episodes now cleverly numbered 4, 5 & 6). They seem to come from the same source and I can only close my eyes and imagine a dark room illuminated only by candles in which mysterious robed and hooded men sit at a large long wooden table and chant until the ideas for the next megabudget film begin to appear in the dripping wax. The chanting grows louder as the seated begin to realize how this Summer's film will improve upon past summertime successes: "OMMMM We, the dark lords of the film industry which took The Hidden Fortress into outer space and called it Star Wars, will now turn the space ships into pirate ships and call it Pirates of the Carribean. In this way we will generate billions and insure our continued existence OMMMMMM."

If you stand Pirates of the Carribean up next to Star Wars looming like indestructable twin towers you get this:

Captain Jack Sparrow = Han Solo
Will Turner = Luke Skywalker
Elizabeth Swann = Princess Leia
Pintel & Ragetti = R2D2 & C3PO
Captain Barbossa = Darth Vader
Davy Jones = Jaba the Hutt
the Kraken = the big nasty toothy thing that Jaba the Hutt feeds victims to.

Plotwise, the comparison is a little shakier except that thirty years ago I left Star Wars feeling baffled and bludgeoned and today I left Pirates in much the same state. This time, however, being in the company of my 5-year-old, I concentrated a little bit more on plot points in an effort to be able to answer the barrage of questions I fully anticipated afterwards as he and I dug into a cheeseburger and Bourbon St. Steak respectively at Applebee's.

In the midst of all the overblown CGI tentacled nonsense one thing stands clear: Johnny Depp is a great actor. In particular, he's a great comic actor. And I'm happy to report that billions of years ago when my guilty pleasure was watching 21 Jump Street with my soon-to-be wife, we used to tell everyone "Yeah, it's awful...but keep an eye out for Johnny Depp."

There are moments of real laugh-out-loud comedy in Pirates: the swordfight atop a runaway waterwheel; a three-way joust on the beach between Sparrow and Turner, Turner and Norrington and Norrington and Sparrow; Captain Jack running like a dandy from a huge throng of cannibals; the crew imprisoned in suspended cells of lashed-together bones. And as Richard Schickel pointed out in his recent Times essay, the comedy is in the scenes that contain no special effects. There is a trim, focused and funny movie somewhere in this mess but it suffocates under the necessity to be a huge movie-for-everyone.

CGI looks like CGI and CGI doesn't look real and in 95% of movies employing massive amounts of CGI the suspension of disbelief is impossible. And in a movie that only needs to shiver its timbers with ships, cutlasses, bottles of rum and dead men's chests, the moments of intense and painful CGI grind Pirates 2 to a screeching halt.

Directed by Gore Verbinski (I can't help but wonder if he'll deffect to the X-Men series while Bryan Singer moves to Pirates 3 and Brett Ratner picks up Superman Returns 2), this movie's beating heart is being held captive in buried treasure chest. It seems it requires an enchanted compass to find it.

And to Johnny Depp I offer this question: will you do a comedy that requires only your broad physical gestures, your cleverly modulated voice and your perfect sense of timing to generate laughs? I look forward to seeing that.

GODZILLA VS. MEGALON (1973)

If you had been lucky enough or depending on your disposition had had the great misfortune to enter a discussion about movies with the late Colorblind James, ne James Charles Cuminale, you would have learned that he regarded movies in general as junk worthy of less praise than aluminum siding. That is, of course, until the discussion steared itself towards the works of Fellini, Kurosawa, "Morgan", "Putney Swope", "The Life and Times of Judge Roy Bean" and anything else that seemed for whatever reason to transcend the form and constraints inherent in a flawed medium. The flaw had apparently more to do with the public's certainty that film was the new art and that the level of importance imparted to it by critics and fans was somehow deserved. To Chuck it was all junk but the occasional flower bloomed amid the wrecks and detritus rusting in the backlot.

Which brings me of course to this discussion of Jun Fukada's arguable masterpiece Godzilla vs. Megalon. As I'm writing this, my wife is dozing gently having opted to watch Star Wars Episode 3 over my suggestion of Shaun of the Dead, a sort of George Romero take on The Full Monty. As the sound of light saber battles and bleeping droids rolls on behind my laptop screen, I can't help but wonder, Just what is "Junk"? Are there different degrees of junk ranging from good junk to bad junk?

I've admittedly watched my fare share of junk recently having slogged my way through Wolf Creek, Saw 2, Hostel, Three...Extremes, Just Before Dawn, Oldboy, the pathetic remake of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, etc. And then, interspersed throughout, were the odd gems The Iron Giant, Donnie Darko, and even the Kill Bills, I and II. And while they may very well have stirred a positive response in me, they quite likely have and will continue to wind up on someone's list of all-time worst movies. Ultimately, I guess, to each his/her own.

Star Wars Episode 3 bores me with its cutting edge technology. It's blue screen marvels and CGI wizardry can't hide horrendous acting and humourless storytelling. Godzilla vs. Megalon is downright exhilirating in its incompetence. The fight sequences are comparable only to the inevitable collisions of all four Teletubbies on any viewing of the that spectacular work of art.

Megalon is a giant beetle released from Seatopia to avenge mankind's atomic weapon's testing in the Pacific. Jet Jaguar is a pre-Power Ranger robot built for good but winding up under the control of the Seatopians. Gigan is enlisted by the baddies once Jet Jaguar a) reestablishes a positive working relationship with the good guys and b) he quadruples in size at the mere push of a button. Godzilla, well, that's another story. Apparently, this movie introduced a new rubber suit and, gosh darn it, this has to be the cutest Godzilla of the entire Showa series.

It's crap. Pure, unadulerated trash. But it didn't cost a gazillion dollars to make like any one of the Star Wars franchise entries did. And they are, IMHO, pure, unadulterated trash. Junk. I guess we all pick our poisons, don't we? Ultimately? I just happen to enjoy mine with a dash of humility. In the time that it takes Star Wars Episode 3's final credits to roll, I could have listened to the awesome "Jet Jaguar Theme" a dozen times. It will wind up on my next CD. Oh yes...it will. Meanwhile, Chuck would roll his eyes and suddenly the conversation would have returned to Melville.

Well here we very well are now, aren't we?

Directed by Jun Fukuda, I give this very serious cinematic essay on the foibles of man's attempt to harness and control the giant monsters and robots of the earth a very strong blast of atomic breath right up Mr. Lucas' butt.

AEON FLUX (2005)

What a headache. What an absolute mess. What a horrendous idea that probably never should have left the drafting table. Not even the spectre of Charlize Theron in tight black (leather? rubber? breathable cotton-poly?)can save this mess.

It's four hundred years in the future and there's a corrupt government controlling the only remaining tired, poor, beautiful huddled masses and then there's the rebel insurgents who want answers, dammit, about the disappearances and who feel the only course of action is the violent overthrow of the ruggedly handsome leader named Muphasa and his corrupt, sniveling brother Scar. Oh, wait, that's the Lion King. Sorry.

Charlize is one of those nimble fighters who snaps faceless guards' necks with her thighs. I pray to God that's how I'll go when my time finally comes. She doesn't run anywhere, she does cartwheels and backflips. If that was really a more expiditious way to get from point A to point B, wouldn't they include cartwheel/backflip races in the Olympics?

Anyway, she gets her orders by taking drugs where she hallucinates the nightmarish vision of Frances McDormand in full Elizabeth 1 drag and Carrot Top's hair. She literally could have called her role in using her Verizon cell phone. She stands there in a gauzy soft focus saying non-lines like "Your time will come" and "You'll have your revenge." There's also a female rebel fighter who had her feet replaced with another pair of hands because as we all know, tumbling is better than running.

Long story short there's something about cloning gone wrong and a futuristic Goodyear Blimp which hovers over the CGI future land and which contains all DNA of the entire remaining population. God, I don't want to give it all away. What I'm really thinking about is asking my wife to strangle me with her bare legs. But I digress.

Directed by Krusty the Klown, I mean Karyn Kusama, I can't even give this brainless waste of time a funny rating. It's that bad.

THE IRON GIANT (1999)

I don't know why it took me so long to see this movie but perhaps it has something to do with having a soon-to-be-turning five-year-old with a voracious appetite for huge bipeds metal or otherwise. I had heard about it being a great film and all but the two of us have been on a year-long Godzilla kick that promises to continue probably until he gets a job working on sets and costume design for Toho. After any kaiju flick he sees, he often begins to create a follow-up, a sequel of sorts, with his action figures: "Daddy, this scene is from 'Mechagodzilla vs Pachycephalosaurus VI!'" or "Did you ever of the movie'The Beast from 20 Miles?'"

Needless to say, I love it. I know many would accuse me of overindulging him or that I'm sending him down the wrong path but I don't think so. We actually talk about the films, who was good, who was bad, why characters and monsters do what they do. When we look up Godzilla on the Internet I try to have him recognize words. He's learning to maneuver around Toho Kingdom on his own. To borrow an all-too-used contemporary phrase: it's all good, man.

And then we watch the Iron Giant, a nearly perfect exercise in family entertainment meets metaphysical journey. Briefly, a giant robot crashlands from outer space in the waters off a small New England fishing village in 1957. It hides in the woods surrounding the town, eats whatever metal it can find, and befriends a little boy, Hogarth, who instinctively recognizes the "ghost in the machine". There's a shady government agent who wants to get the bottom of all the mysterious goings-on. There's a soul-patched beatnik who collects scrap metal and turns some of it into art. There's the single mom who is patient, attentive and "up to here" with Hogarth's tall tales, the tallest of which is in the forest just behind her house.

The film is filled with beautiful set pieces such as the giant's temporarily severed hand running amok in the boy's home; the Giant agreeing to become Hogarth's personal carnival ride; Hogarth's succinct and dead-on lesson to the Iron Giant on what it means to have a soul; the Iron Giant's own final declaration of who he chooses to be.

This is one of the few movies I've seen in many years that I could describe as being perfect. No missteps, no false sentimentality, a story so clear and sharp in its intent that it is hard to believe it is not centuries old. Then again, perhaps it is.

Directed by Brad Bird, the genius behind his follow-up The Incredibles, the Iron Giant simply stands head and shoulders above the wasteland of film. This isn't a movie, it's art.

Roy and I discuss the Iron Giant:

What did you like about the movie?
-I like it when the boy went into the forest and the Iron Giant sneaked up on him.
-I like it when the big hand was using the toilet.
-I like it when he [the boy] said "no following" but the Iron Giant did anyway

What happens to the Iron Giant?
-He gets shot
How?
-By a big bomb
Why?
-Cause...'cause he flew up in the air.
Why did he fly up in the air?
-'Cause he wanted to protect the people.
Why was that important?
-'Cause if the bomb hit the earth all the people would die.
So what do we call that?
-Explode.
(I laugh) Is that called "sacrifice"? Does he sacrifice himself?
-Yeah.
Is the Iron Giant dead in the end?
-No.
How come?
-'Cause he builds himself again.
Did that make you happy?
-Yeah.
Me too.

VAN HELSING (2004)

Unbelievably awful. Unbearable. Pure junk. A complete travesty. Wretched.

Directed by Stephen I'm-Going-To-Milk-The-Universal-Monsters-Vault-For-All-It's-Worth Sommers, I give this pile of shit a stake through it's money grubbing heart.

SAW II (2005)

I have to wonder what happens to the cast and crew who work together to produce the sort of film that is Saw II. I have to wonder that because I don't want to wonder about the sort of people who watch this shit...like me. But, really, what does a production designer talk about over dinner, or dream about at night, when the focus of his work is designing a venus-flytrap-styled head mask filled with spikes that will clamp shut around some twit's head after he fails to retrieve a key that has been lodged behind his right eye?

The Saw films want very much to be "deep" like David Fincher's Se7en. There is a lot of talk about morality and "teaching" people how to appreciate their lives. The victims of each of Jigsaw's (our resident psycho) must endure some hideous torture or self-inflicted pain in order to survive. The will to live must outweigh the ghastly exercise of each trap.

Here we have 8 people trapped in a house who are breathing in the Tokyo subway nerve gas. There are syringes filled with antidotes that are placed inside giant ovens, wrist slicing boxes, and a gruesome pit filled with hypodermic needles. Each victim is there because of a personal sin against humanity and each trap is designed with a particular victim in mind.

Blah, blah, blah. All of this the viewer may either find genuinely offensive or exhilarating and funny. For me, the real offense is incured with the backstory given the villainous Jigsaw. He is a man not only dying of cancer but a survivor of a horrific car-crash/suicide attempt as well. A man who supposedly wants to open people's eyes (sometimes literally) to the truth of their own wasted lives. And in order to accomplish this, he finds the ways and means to kidnap people and plant them inside elaborate traps that he has painstakingly designed and crafted. The house the 8 victims are trapped in is filled with steel doors that open and shut with timers. A bank safe covering a trap door. A hole carved out of a hardwood floor that gets filled with the aforementioned hypos.

What cancer patient has the time for this? And was this dude a psychopath before the cancer was detected? Was the knowledge of his terminal condition enough to wake up the incredibly resourceful, creative, mechanically clever albeit twisted and misguided craftsman inside him?

The beauty of Se7en is that the killer's plan unfolds beautifully and in a manner that at least creates the illusion of absolute plausability. Saw II, while throwing around moralistic claptrap throughout, is nothing more than drive-in movie fodder. In wanting to preach on the value of life while offering a series of grisly set-pieces, it wants to have its cake and eat it too. By the end of Se7en, we are witness to the horror that while the villain dies at the hand of the anti-hero, that act becomes the last perfectly fitting piece to his violently beautiful puzzle. Now that's a jigsaw worth studying.

I give Saw II, directed by Darren Lynn Bousman, an antidote-filled hypo in hopes that the cure will end this rubbish once and for all.

THE SKELETON KEY (2005)

Given the nature of my work, I was intrigued right off the bat that Kate Hudson's character in The Skeleton Key is a hospice care provider. That it happens to coincide with my profession was one thing, that it's a decidedly unglamorous and un-Hollywood profession to wrap around Goldie Hawn's daughter was enough to make me think "OK, I'm in. Where's this going?"

To her credit Ms. Hudson is plays against her It-Girl-Tabloid-I-Married-A-Rocker image. And she's up against some serious acting chops in Gena Rowlands as Violet Devereux, the matriarch of a crumbling and creepy bayou plantation home and John Hurt, turning in a fantastic wordless performance, as her dying husband Ben Devereux.

The movie riffs on the nature and power of belief that can either support a person's sense of purpose or ultimately be their unraveling. As Caroline, Kate's character, begins her stay in Mrs. Devereux' mansion as Mr. Devereux' hospice provider, she begins in the grandest Nancy Drew tradition to "snoop around" and finds evidence of hoodoo and black magic in the far reaches of the attic. She soon suspects that Ben Devereux is suffering not from the result of a stroke but perhaps from some form of black magic. While she is clear with herself that she does not believe in such stuff, she is rightfully aware of the effect such sorcery can have on someone who does believe.

Stylistically, The Skeleton Key harks back to the golden age of Betty Davis' gothic horror films and makes splendid use of Lousiana's lush-and-beautiful-turns-to-stormy-and-isolating climate. The tight ensemble cast keeps this from looking like a mere star vehicle of Ms. Hudson.

The movie follows its own internal logic and wraps up with a nifty ending that, although quite disturbing in its implications, makes perfect sense. Although perhaps not as harrowing as the bloodless climax of George Sluizer's sinister 1988 masterpiece "Spoorloos" (The Vanishing), it nonetheless recalls that moment of dread shortly before the credits begin to roll.

Directed by Iain Softley, I give The Skeleton Key 4 out of 5 shrunken heads and a High John the Conqueror root for protection

THE DEVIL'S REJECTS (2005)

The Devil's Rejects is director Rob Zombie's critically acclaimed follow-up to his House of 1ooo Corpses. "House" was more or less his homage to horror films of the 70s, most notably Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Over the years, TCM (not Turner Classic Movies) has become the watermark of horror films. It is either immitated, reprised, remade, or referred to by directors who wish to establish themselves as serious genre contenders.

Not that TCM did its director Tobe Hooper any good. After his success with "Poltergeist" in the early 80s, his career has pretty much hit the skids. I was among the few stupefied viewers who attempted to watch "Crocodile" on Sci-Fi in disbelief that Mr. Hooper actually had helmed the project. As I recall there was also a dreadful Brad Douriff vehicle entitled "Spontaneous Combustion" which coincidentally was about spontaneous combustion. Clever title, that. In my humble opinion, Tobe Hooper is no more.

"House" was a blatant TCM rip-off which featured a quartet of young dimwits who stumble upon the murderous Firefly family and are dispatched one by one. For some reason left unexplained, while the goofy and comical murderers are above ground, there exists also some strange beings underground who perform all sorts of torture style operations on victims the Fireflies don't finish off themselves. I don't know, maybe I was just too tired to try to figure it out, but the underground weirdos seemed to belong to a different movie entirely.

The Devil's Rejects, for those of us who had been waiting with bated breath for the continuation of the family Firefly's story, is the continuation of the family Firefly's story. They've been found out, they're surrounded by police, they make their escape and are for the remainder of the film pursued by a rather crazed William Forsythe, who is hellbent on bringing them to justice for the murder of his brother in the first film. While Forsythe's character tracks the Fireflies, the Firefly clan kidnap people who they have crossed paths with and torture, humiliate and kill them. Fun viewing indeed.

What ultimately makes this film a cut above the usual genre fare is Zombie's willingness to turn the tables on the Firefly family as Forsythe, descending in vengeance-seeking madness, becomes their stalker, torturer and executioner. In a genre that often barely pays lip service to anything resembling character development, this change is practically revolutionary. Unfortunately, and this may be a clear indication that after all these years I'm moving further and further away from an appreciation of the genre, none of this ultimately matters. It's as if the entire message of the film is that good people die horrible deaths and bad people torture and kill people before dying horrible deaths themselves.

If the true purpose of horror is to frighten and terrify the viewer then this movie fails. Ever since the strange bedfellows of comedy and horror/gore got together, the result has been films that can perhaps shock or disturb but rarely simply terrify. And the critics who seem to enjoy them the most are the one's for whom the comic elements during grand-guinol style violence makes the film work.

Me? I don't get it. Once the credits began to roll my reaction was "pffft...whatever. Next." I give The Devil's Rejects the entire output of the Three Stooges to pour over and perhaps learn from.
BTW, the underground beings from House of 1000 Corpses were completely dropped. Perhaps their story will be continued in Mr. Zombie's next highly anticipated feature.

GODZILLA VS. GIGAN (1972)

Gigan is an awesome kaiju from outer space. Along with the ubiquitous King Ghidorah, each is sent hermetically sealed in red and blue space crystals to assist a race of alien space-cockroaches in defeating Earth. The space-cockroaches have reel-to-reel tapes containing some of Professor Emeritus Tim Sullivan's noodlings on the old Putney 2000.

The signals from the tape instruct Gigan and King Ghidorah. Apparently Godzilla and Anguirus are supposed to be effected by the sounds as well. But they are not because they belong to earth. In this film, Godzilla and Anguirus talk to each other telepathically in dubbed English, which caused outrage among die hard fans of kaiju and the supposed rules that govern their Toho universe.

There's a lot of rumbling among the four titans as well as a group of hippies (dude!) who lend their peace and love sensibilities to Godzilla and Anguirus. Some people believed initially that this film actually featured Jerry Garcia's debut as an actor but close scrutiny discloses a Japanese Jerry look-alike. I seem to recall the Jerry Garcia character eating lots of bananas in the movie. Many fans believed this to be a hidden message about the psychedelic potential of smoking banana peels, much as Donovan's hit "Mellow Yellow" was a few years prior.

Aside from all that, Gigan is absolutely the coolest kaiju to come down the pike with his pointed claws, pointed mandibles and, best of all, a rotating buzzsaw protruding from his belly. You can't find anything like that in Texas chainsaw Massacre! By the film's end, our monster heroes have sent our monster villains packing with an invitation never to set foot on our cool blue orb again. At least until the next Toho production is cranked out.

Directed by Jun Fukuda, a sorry successor to the venerable Ishiro Honda, I give this less-than-classic kaiju-fest a sample pack of roach motels.

THE CAVE (2005)

I like Cole Hauser. He's definitely B-list but he's all right. Maybe it's because the first time I was aware of him was in Pitch Black, a better-than-most-but-still-can't-touch-Alien Alien wannabe. He's got an icy stare and wide eyed expression that on any other actor would be their I'm-doing-this-for-comic-effect look. On him, it looks menacing and cold.

He was good in Pitch Black although the picture belonged to Vin Diesel and the Aussie actress whose name escapes me at the moment. He was good in the same way in Paparazzi, an otherwise forgettable and regretable exercise from the school of revenge genre. In The Cave he's good too. In fact, he's the only good actor in it.

The movie begs the question, how much do casting directors get paid? Is it a shitty job? Do they just pick randomly from the Book of Studs or Beach Bunnies We Can Pass Off As Scientists? Aarg. I'm really tired of good looking people. I mean in general they're ubiquitous and they exist only to make me feel less good about myself.

And a shlocky summer horror romp like this absolutely doesn't benefit from good looking actors. THEY'RE IN A CAVE, PEOPLE! NO LIGHTS! CAN'T SEE HOW BEAUTIFUL ANYONE IS ANYWAY!

Let us pause for a moment and remember the perfectly selected cast for the original Alien movie. Probably the last time dead on casting for a horror flick ever occurred. It could be argued that Tom Skerrit is the stud of the movie but his character absolutely betrays that possibility. Here's a guy who for all the world only wants one thing: to do what the company has sanctioned him to do and then go home. He hardly burst with heroic charisma.

Next, Sigourney Weaver is a beautiful actress but far too intelligent and edgy to just come off as eye candy. Veronica Cartwright was nervous and frightened, smoking constantly and following orders with an air of resignation. Harry Dean Stanton and Yaphet Kotto were more or less the C3PO and R2-D2 of the film, providing brief comic relief as the beleaguered mechanics who don't even rate a "full share" on this voyage. Ian Holm is a standout as the cold and threatening Ash and the great John Hurt lends his fatigued expression to Kane, the Alien's first victim.

The characters looked and spoke like tired, underpaid and fed up employees too powerless to argue against company directives and proceedures. The crew was as real as what you would expect to see at your local garage or in the boiler room of a skyscraper.

Nowadays, studs. Studs and chicks. Studs and chicks get lost in a cave. Studs and chicks get lost in wax house. Studs and chicks get eaten alive. Whatever. What made Alien work were the characters: plain, simple, no frills, regular folk.

The Cave, despite the good looks of its cast, does display some beautiful camera work. Some of the spelunking scenes are truly claustrophobic. Animatronic monsters are OK but at this point, you've seen it all before. The final frame twist is silly and detectable from a mile away.

Directed by Bruce Hunt, 2nd line director for the vile Matrix Reloaded and Revolution fiascos, I give The Cave 2 out 5 flashlights and a spare rebreather. You're gonna need it.

HOUSE OF WAX (2005)

At some point the question I have to ask myself is, why do I watch this stuff? What am I hoping to get out of it? How could this possibly be anything but throwing away two precious hours of my life? Do I consider myself a 'genre' fan? Well, certainly I used to be. And with the current bumper crop of horror films I guess I have been interested in seeing what's going on, what's new, who's shaking things up.

I saw Saw, or I've seen Saw, which came on like a clarion call to fans of lurid, sadistic, nasty-ass film fans everyone that their favorite genre had just been taken off life-support and given a new lease. Ok, it had an interesting premise involving a killer who does not kill his victims per se, but forces them to kill in order to survive. And by not killing or refusing to kill, they inadvertently set in to motion their own demise. Blah, blah, blah, there is a lot of yelling, screaming, crying, and grotesque set-pieces all leading to one of the most absurd examples of the currently-in-vogue-and-all-too-obligatory-required-expected-device: the twist ending . (you can almost hear the buzzing among horror fans: "Is there a twist?" "What's the twist?" "No twist?" "I'm not going.")

Anyway, House of Wax bears no relationship with the 1953 Vincent Price classic except one of the baddies is named Vincent. Quel homage! The other bad guy is Bo and there's some "back-story" about them having been born Siamese twins and separated by their father, the doctor, employing some "radical procedure" while mom stayed at home and got involved with building wax figures. Yawn! Soooo typical. As for the rest of the plot-points let's go to the Texas Chainsaw Massacre blueprint which requires that six 20-something idiots travel together, get lost on some back roads that only exist in shlock and begin to snoop around when all signs seem to indicate that they should get back in their cars and leave.

In all fairness the titular house of wax, which coincidentally is literally a wax house, is fairly impressive. But why it never apparently suffered from waxus-meltus-ona-hottus-dayus is anyone's guess.

House of Wax, directed by Jaume Collet-Serra, rolls along o.k. without really providing anything new to the genre. For me, as soon as the six doofus idiots were introduced I began to moan audibly. I felt forced into playing the "that guy's obviously not going to make it, that guy's toast, Paris Hilton? No way she'll make it" game.

I give this piece of earwax a nearly empty box of Q-Tip swabs.

BTW, there's no twist. And the people you thought would buy it, do.

What I Went to the Movie Theater to See in 2005

Well, looking back, these are the films I actually went to the movieplex to see:

Wallace & Grommit: Curse of the Were-Rabbit: far and away one of the best animated features of all time and one of the greatest laugh-riot films ever. The only person laughing harder than me was another dad three rows up. When the lights went on, turned out he was none other than Adam Wilcox, City News writer and fellow Happy Farmer bandmate. I knew I liked that guy.

Godzilla Final Wars: the Godzilla flick that actually dares to end civilization as we've never known it. The big guy looks great, Gigan with chainsaws is awesome, and the spikey-haired villain in the Matrix-leather duster does the best freak-out since Jack Nicholson in the Witches of Eastwick.

Pooh's Heffalump Movie: Sweet. Roy liked it. Actually I had no complaints about it. I miss the original voices but they did a good job nonetheless.

Shrek 2: I can't say I'm a big fan of the Shrek movies. This was Roy's first venture into a darkened movie theater and that alone made the experience memorable.

The Bourne Supremacy: very edgy sequel to The Bourne Identity with Matt Damon's character becoming more menacing with each frame. I could have done without the rapid edit-till-you-puke style and the sound in the theater was horrendous: so loud the speakers were clipping. Very annoying. A good watch on DVD however. Oops, we saw that in '04. God, we're such lousy movie-goers...

That's it, folks. Hopefully next year we'll settle on a good babysitter and get out more. Truthfully, there really wasn't anything out that I felt compelled not to wait for the DVD release.
King Kong will have to wait for next year's selection. I will see that in the theater.

THE ISLAND (2005)

A random sampling of dialogue from "The Island":

Run! Run!

Go! Go! Go!

Get them! Don't let them get away!

How do you know what you're doing?

I don't know!

Hold on!

Look out!

Go! Go! Go!

Look out!

Directed by Michael Bay, I give The Island (2005) an oscar for best screenplay. Without giving anything away, let us pray this tripe never gets cloned.