Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room (review)

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This is it right here, people: the ‘ownership society’ our so-called leaders think we ‘deserve,’ an unregulated, unpoliced Wild West of corporate hegemony. Fraud, greed, arrogance, powermongering? All part of the game, folks, all part of the game. It’s every man for himself, the way God intended, and God help you if you were so fucking stupid that you let yourself be born with anything less than a platinum spoon in your mouth and powerful connections out the wazoo. Cuz most of us are gonna end up serfs if this stuff continues.

Look at Me (review)

Hey, if you’re into whiny soap operas about self-obsessed people who never shut up complaining about how miserable they are, have at it. But if you get enough of that in real life or just don’t care to spend a couple hours with fake people who are that exasperating, no one would blame you for … more…

Double Dare (review)

In a male-dominated industry — filmmaking — there’s probably not a specialty more fueled by testosterone than stuntwork, and the women who choose this bruise- and discrimination-ridden path are exactly as tough as you’d expect. Two of them are profiled in Amanda Micheli’s festival-favorite documentary, which never lets its enormous love and respect for its … more…

Kingdom of Heaven (review)

Okay, baron, actually. Orlando Bloom plays a baron, a medieval French baron. But still. Yum. I’m sorry — I can’t help it. He’s *beautiful.* So, I’m shallow. I admit it. He’s *gorgeous,* and any hotblooded heterosexual woman who denies she’s going to see *Kingdom of Heaven* just because Orlando Bloom is in it is lying, I tell ya: lying. Or else she’s a medieval scholar and wants to see how Hollywood gets it all wrong. But even that woman is going to Not Care how wrong it might be when he strides across the screen all long and lanky and swings a sword and gets all angst-ridden for more reasons than a man should have to be angst-ridden and blinks those limpid eyes in masculine pain and talks with that mouth you just want to smush and make all the hurt go away…

House of Wax (review)

There’s a sexy figure on display throughout *House of Wax,* and we probably won’t see its like ever again. It’s the sign at a rural Florida gas station announcing that the price of gas is — *drool* — $1.19 a gallon. Oh, baby.

The Partridge Family: The Complete First Season (review)

Come on, get happy! Oh, the power to bewitch that is incarnate in that horribly catchy theme song is but part of the paranormal cunning of this singing family in flare pants. Watching these 25 episodes from the show’s debut season, which kicked off in September 1970, one becomes aware that The Partridge Family actually … more…

Jack and the Beanstalk (review)

Trippy! There’s a lot of cult love for this 1974 Japanese animated production of the classic fairy tale, and no wonder. It starts off pretty straightforward, sticking to the story we all know about the boy who sells his cow for a couple of magic beans and telling it through rather bland, simplistic animation. But … more…

Harvey Birdman, Attorney at Law: Volume One (review)

“Feel the power of attorney!” screams Harvey Birdman, cartoon lawyer, and you will, my friend, you will. The entry in Cartoon Network’s late-night Adult Swim ransacks the cartoon world for legal cases, and the butts in the witness chair belong to a rogue’s gallery of sketchy characters — Shaggy and Scooby-Doo, Yogi Bear, Fred Flintstone, … more…

Dynasty: The Complete First Season (review)

Forget “Who shot JR?” It’s “Who’s testifying against Blake Carrington at the murder trial of his son’s homosexual lover?” here in this, one of the earliest primetime soap operas and a primo example of the overbaked glitz, dizzy glam, and enormous shoulder pads that dominated early-80s entertainment. It’s slow moving, even for a soap opera, … more…

Bill Maher: Be More Cynical (review)

It’s hard to believe that this could be a kinder, gentler Bill Maher than we’ve seen of late, but this HBO comedy special was taped in 2000, before Maher ran afoul of the new post-9/11 miasma created by the new political correctness bumping up against a contraction of personal freedom, before he got real crotchety. … more…