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If there’s one thing That 70s Show proves, it’s that idiocy knows no temporal bounds. This inexplicably popular sitcom would be indistinguishable from just about every other sitcom on the air today were it not for the bell bottoms and shag ‘dos. Herewith all 25 episodes from the debut 1998-9 season, in which the gang … more…
It should hardly come as a surprise that the Japanese continue to find new ways to use animation to be both creepy and sexist. Here, a teenaged boy, Wataru, gets shanghaied to a mysterious, remote island, where thirteen obsequious girls who claim to be his sisters dote on him night and day. The four half-hour … more…
Unfortunately, the most remarkable thing about Noel is its near-simultaneous triple-headed distribution: a limited theatrical release starting today, a debut on cable network TNT on November 28, and a disposable-DVD release on November 17, in a new format called Flexplay, which costs about the same as a rental but gives you only 48 hours of … more…
Produced by Iowa Public Television, this compilation disc is pledge-drive fodder, the stuff your local PBS station airs — with constant interruption — when begging for your bucks. Not that constant interruption is fatal to this choppy special. Hosted by Penelope Keith (of the PBS staple Britcom To the Manor Born), this thoroughly inoffensive “tribute” … more…
Who’d have thunk that a freeform meditation on tobacco, family, and filmmaking would be so compelling? Documentarian Ross McElwee, whose great grandfather helped launch the tobacco industry, returns to his childhood home of North Carolina to meander through an exploration of his heritage, but “documentary” isn’t quite the word to describe the result — it’s … more…
Troy Duffy is a dick. A grade-A hothead asshole with an ego that practically verges on the psychotic. That’s not me talking — that’s *Overnight,* a kick-ass documentary by two of Duffy’s former friends, Tony Montana and Mark Brian Smith, who demonstrate most ably why they are no longer his friends, in this tale of greed and arrogance and the very very dark side of the seductive power of Hollywood. It’s so perfect an example of well-earned comeuppance and karmic justice that if it weren’t true, someone would have had to make it up.
If we’re honest about it, there’s something kinda creepy about the jolly man who lives at the North Pole, isn’t there? He sees you when you’re sleeping? Ewww. Slave armies of happy elves mass-producing Bratz and Dancing Elmos? Weird. Christmas stories tend to gloss over these rather vile underpinnings, and rightly so — the little ‘uns should go to bed on Christmas Eve with visions of sugarplums dancing in their heads, not paranoid nightmares about a big fat dude breaking and entering and helping himself to milk and cookies.
Pierce Brosnan (Laws of Attraction) continues to play Remington Steele, the dashing, elegant gentleman scoundrel, and that’s just fine. Unfortunately, the inelegant doofus Woody Harrelson (EDtv) is part of the package deal for this outing, and if Brosnan is still turning heads, Harrelson is still turning stomachs. Harrelson’s mere presence, as a dumbass FBI agent, … more…
That teaser trailer — you know the one I’m talking about — with the fat old ex-superhero struggling to get into his spandex costume? It left such a bad taste in my mouth whenever I contemplated the film that must go with it. I imagined a gang of former masked crusaders called out of happy retirement, reluctantly huffing and puffing their way back into action, replete with very unfunny cracks about getting fat and old, and probably with an even more unfunny getting-into-shape-a-la-*Rocky* sequence thrown in for good measure.
Jude Law (Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow) is irrefutably charming as unrepetant womanizer Alfie Elkins… maybe a bit more genuinely, warmly charming than Alfie should be, actually. Alfie’s swinging lifestyle — complete with moped and Mod neckware — is about as dated as you’d expect from a fairly faithful remake of a 60s … more…
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