Month: March 2003

Even if you didn’t know this was a Stephen King thing, you’d know it was King. *Dreamcatcher* is a veritable stew of all the things King loves: preternaturally talented kids, ESP, bodily invasion, childhood friendships cemented by traumatic experience, secret government projects, all drenched in really gross and gory entrails. And it’s as compelling and confounding and compulsively enjoyable as any of King’s writings. It’s not classic King, but even at his worst, he’s still pretty damn good.

It’s all beer and skittles, strangely enough. No disgruntled passengers (except for the one Royalty Airlines instructor Mike Myers portrays for training and comedic purposes, though the comedy is as uncomfortable as coach), no terror alerts, no confiscation of tweezers, no bomb-sniffing dogs (though their noses would have been twitching at this flick in a second), no long lines at metal detectors.

I’m not a fan of Bush II. Hardly a surprise, I guess, seeing as how I’m one of those Blue-state namby-pamby liberal East Coast intellectual types. So I’m completely and unashamedly biased when it comes to films like *Journeys with George* — an illuminating travelogue of Bush’s 2000 campaign trail — *Unprecedented: The 2000 Presidential Election,* an angry look at hanging chads, Katherine Harris, and the general fiasco in Florida.

This uninspired and unabashed rip-off of Spy Kids puts that Malcolm in the Middle kid (Frankie Muniz: My Dog Skip) in James Bond’s shoes, threads, and wheels, doing little damage to either of its begetters but cribbing none of their energy, either, as it skitters across the screen and trots out junior-spy yucks so bland … more…

Coming this Friday night, only to USA — or maybe TBS — THE HUNTED, starring Chuck Norris and Dean Cain!

You think that you’ve seen it all, that movies have inured you to violence — or at least, to depictions of violence onscreen — and then you see a film like *Irreversible.* If you can work up the nerve for it.

The generation gap is back, only this time it’s Mom who’s the pot-smoking, sleeping-around, rock-‘n’-rollin’ hippie and Son who’s the buttoned-down, responsible square. Serious med student Sam (Christian Bale: Reign of Fire) and his serious grad-student fiancée Alex (Kate Beckinsale: Pearl Harbor) come back from school in the serious East to live — temporarily — … more…

I am a white person. I am passionless. I’m probably intolerant and likely harbor racist attitudes. I don’t know how to shake my booty. I wear khakis. What I need is a sassy black friend to invade my house and throw wild parties and teach me how to get down. You know, for my own personal enlightenment. Because guns and felonies add spice to life, breaking and entering is cool, and being some kind of freaky is what being real is all about.