September 16, 2002
Happy Birthday, America!

Yeah, I know it’s a little late, but some crackhead stole my Dayplanner, so what can you do? We’ve got eight different kinds of fun coming your way from Entertainment Policeland today, so I hope you’re ready. No, that’s not a scientific figure and it probably wouldn’t stand up to academic scrutiny, but goddammit, we’re here to have fun. Leave your nit-picky bummer vibe at the door. We’re doing what we can here to get through these Dark Ages of Autumn movie entertainment, and we need your oppressive lab coat act like Traci Lords needs a milk mustache. So let’s all get with the program here. On to the movies!

In Theaters

Moonlight Miles
Remember back when Dustin Hoffman was in good movies all the time? It seemed like he just wandered from set to set, dropping in to add a few lines to whatever movies looked good. No? Honestly, neither do I, but people tell me it happened. The last thing I liked him in was Hook, that basketball movie with Tommy Davidson, but it wasn’t that long ago that he was winning Best Retard Oscars left and right and people said his name louder than they do now. I only found out he was in this movie because his sister was sitting behind me in the theater and she wouldn’t shut up about it. Anyway, this movie is fine as entertainment if you’re really in the mood to see something about a guy working two jobs at once, which I suppose is a mood people get in sometimes. I thought it was kind of slow myself. They tried to spice it up a bit with some Elton John tunes, but none of them were the Crocodile Hunter song, so I can’t say how well that worked. If you ask me, I think Hoffman needs to spice up his own career a bit, maybe by playing a superhero or something. I’m sure there’s got to be at least a few of those left, like The Wriggler or Captain Pants or something like that he could sink his teeth into.

Red Dragon
Some people keep on pumping even when the tit done come up dry, and now we can officially add our friends at the Silence of the Lambs franchise to that list. Sure, I think Hannibal Lecter opening up a Chinese restaurant is a clever twist for a new film in this face-eating British Royalty saga, but in case anyone fell asleep before the end of the last one, or crapped out while they were reading the book, he got his hand cut off at the end. And if there’s one rule of thumb that every restaurant guide and Fodor’s book has in common, it’s don’t eat at an Asian restaurant where the cook only has one hand. Hell, I don’t think Hannibal could even eat Asian food, since you need one hand to work the chopsticks and the other hand to push food onto the chopsticks, otherwise those things are worthless.

Sweet Homo Alabama
See, now this is great. I always have a gay old time every time I travel to the South, since that’s just the way they swing it down there. It’s not my way, but I’m not about to be the one to suggest we do things Chicago-style when I’m visiting Rome, if you know what I mean. I’m not sure what exactly Chicago-style is, maybe deep dish or something, but the point is that it’s not very gay. Unlike the South, which is as homo till the cows come home. And you know, it’s about time somebody made a movie about the big gay pool party that the South really is. You might get a different idea watching the news and from books and whatever, but then you get down there and Holy Homo Moses. If you can’t get your crops dusted in the South then brother, it just ain’t happening. This film does a good job capturing the verve and the sass of the South, though I think they scaled back on the drag queens a bit to make it more palatable for uptight Northern audiences.

The Tuxedo
It’s a formula that has worked in the James Bond movies for eons: if the suit is nice enough, it doesn’t really matter what boob actor you stick in it for the “motor home cart-wheeling off the cliff oops your fly is open perfect ten swan dive into a glass of French spring water” scene. That suit has been the star of Bond pictures for generations, and somebody finally caught on and spun it off into its own franchise. This time they’ve blanched spastic Chinese superstar Jackie Chan into the penguin suit, and his brand of “move really fast and pretend it’s karate” antics translate well to this rubber-stamped genre. Chan fans will all be satisfied, as the 14 year-olds and the repressed Asian men in the audience get to see some almost-exposed breasts, Jackie falls down a ladder a few times and he uses a nerf ball to beat up a guy who looks kind of like Jet Li. Moviegoers looking for more plot, however, might be somewhat disappointed to find that the film’s dialogue is made up entirely of fight noises, like “Ha! Huah! Sho! Nananana! Oooow!”

That’s what we’ve got for you this week, America. Keep coming back next week and you might win a prize or something! I don’t know, I’m not in charge of the prizes. It sounds like fun though, maybe we could give away a drug boat or a plate of nachos, something to spice up the week. I’ll ask around, there might be some office chairs we’re not using or a fax machine that’s not chained down. You never know, you could be a winner and nobody bothered to tell you. I’ll get back to you on that one.

September 16, 2002
Ask Roland, The Bang Your Sisters, Barbieshop, Igby Goes Down, Trapped

September 2, 2002
Ask Roland, City by the Sea, fear dot com, Swimfan

August 19, 2002
Adventures of Pluto Nash, One Hour Photo, Serving Sara, Simone, Undisputed

August 5, 2002
Blood Work, Full Frontal, Love and a Ballet, Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio of Disguise, Spy Kids 2: The Island of Lost Diaries, XXX

July 22, 2002
Blue Crush, The Country Bears, Eight Legged Freaks, Halloween: Resuscitation, Signs

Summer Movie Preview Part Two
Austin Powers in Goldmember, The Crocodile Hunter: The Main Course, K-19: The Widowmaker, Like Mike, Men in Black Tubes, Milo & Stitch, Minority Depot, The Powerpuff Girls, Rain of Fire, Road to Perdition, Stuart Little 2

Summer Movie Preview Part One
Bad Company, The Bourne Dentist, Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, Enough, Harvard Man, The Importance of Being Ernest, Insomnia, Scooby, Don’t!, Spirit: Stallion of the Cinnamon, The Sumbitch on All Fours, Undercover Brother, Windtalkers

April 29, 2002
Murder by Numbnuts, National Lampoon’s Gene Wilder, The Scorpion King, Star Wars 2: Attack of the Blondes, Band-its, Life is in tha House, The Man Who Wasn’t There, Original Sink, The Has-Beens, Ali McBeal, FIFA World Cup Soccer, Chessmaster 5500

April 1, 2002
All About the Berenstains, Ice Age, Mentident Evil, Picnic Room, Pig Trouble, Joy Ride, K-PAX, Sexy Bees