October 28, 2002
Hello hello, America!

Boy have we got some nipples for you this week! I ca- nipples? You know what I mean, America, movies. Weird. Some people think it’s significant when you nip out like that, ma- slip up, nip rocks, whatever. It’s not like this is a column about taut, hairy man-nipples or anything. Woman! Woman nipples. Hairless and soft. I mean, it’s not about that either, but if this column were about nipples, it sure as hell wouldn’t be about any tempting, salty, lickable man nipples. Gross.

All right, let’s get to the boobies before somebody gets hurt.

In Theaters

Auto Focus
Ford loves to kiss its own ass over the fact that they present the hit drama 24 without commercial interruption, like Robitussin used to do with Twin Peaks. But then they turn around and flush all of that goodwill right down the crapper by putting out a movie that’s one thinly-disguised two hour commercial for their miserable mini-car, the Focus. Sure, there’s some porn and scandal and whatnot in there to distract you from this fact, but it’s still obviously the opening salvo in the upcoming “Battle of the Shitty Midget Cars” with Ford trying to high-step its way out to an early lead over the Toyota Echo and the Chevy Burp. You might think the Honda Cramp should have a place in the fray, but it’s technically in a different car class since you can fit a jug of milk in the trunk.

Formula 51
Leave it to Samuel L. Jackson to bring Heinz founder Mortimer P. Heinz to badass life on the big screen. Sure, Heinz wasn’t black, but he sure made catsup like he was. And Jackson brings that tomato-squashing verve to this role so convincingly, you’ll almost forget how he tricked you into paying to see that shitty genius shark movie a while back.

Ghost Ship
It sure as hell didn’t work for Speed, but the makers of the 2001 Nintendo Pictures hit Ghost World apparently thought two times was a charm when they decided to needlessly recycle their hit film by setting the sequel on a big ol’ boat. Sure, Patrick Swayzee gets to hop around some more and shoot fireballs out of his nose at skeleton pirates, and you know the kids love that, but not bringing back Whoopi Goldberg for the sequel was a big mistake, and the picture runs out of gas halfway through because of it. The second half of the film is exactly the same as the first, except now the ghosts are orange instead of blue, which I guess is supposed to mean something.

Jackass: The Movie
The elephant fetishists aren’t going to like it, but Michael Moore’s latest cannonball into the kiddie pool of conservative life is his funniest film yet. Not that it takes someone with an IQ over 15 to make our president look like a yokel, but Moore does it up right with this hilarious space invasion of all things George W. Bush. It’s all here, every time he’s made up a word to express his complex feelings during an interview, the notorious “Stuck Inside a Port-a-John” episode from the Republican Primaries, and some jaw-dropping super-8 footage of a teenage George W. being outsmarted by a Chinese finger trap (and tape of the classic 911 call that followed). Sometimes Moore can be too far-reaching in his satire, but this time he hit the nail on the nards.

The Truth About Charlie
Red Bagel’s third unpublished book about the Vietnam War finally finds its way to the big screen, credited of course to one of Bagel’s many pen names. Always one of the most popular of Bagel’s photocopied manuscripts around his favorite local haunts (the Laundromat and the Crazy Crotch Tavern), Charlie uncovers the untold story of the Vietnam conflict, beginning with Grover Cleveland’s illegal importation of midgets from the Orient in the 60’s and continuing through the mock battles staged on a Hollywood set for the benefit of JFK’s private investors. The book, if you can call a ragged stack of Xerox paper binder-clipped together a book, ripped the asshole off the entire cover-up, and changed the way about fifteen people thought about Vietnam forever. The movie, of course, is watered down horseshit with some pretty faces plastered on the package, but that’s to be expected. The government hasn’t let Hollywood come anywhere near the truth since Benji the Hunted in 1987*.

(*Note: Benji Bones a Bitch, the 1992 home-video hit, was filmed entirely in Vancouver, outside of the Hollywood system.)

Waking Up in Reno with Billy Bob Thornton
You know it’s got to be Halloween season when they start putting scary junk in all of the upcoming movie trailers, like Jennifer Love Hewitt or shots of Billy Bob in his bikini briefs. This is what they mean when they call something a “Psychological Thriller,” unless it’s a movie about a killer psychologist, in which case that’s what they mean. I probably should have seen it coming, from the title and all, but I have to admit I jumped halfway out of my pants during the scene when Ashley Judd wakes up and rolls over to find Mr. Slingblade between her sheets. Absolutely the scariest waking up scene since the one where that Canadian chick wakes up to find a moose head in her bed in The Godfather.

Well, it looks like that’s that, America. Another two weeks down, another several hundred to go before we can lay down and die. That’s how the country song goes, anyway. Old-time country, not this new truck commercial country they play nowadays. I’m talking about back when country was about having your balls chewed off by a thresher and how that means you won’t be able to have no two-headed children with your cousin Moline, and how that drove you to drinkin’. These days country music is all about how your agent tricked your dumb country ass out of a million dollars and now you’ve got to do a Dr. Pepper commercial so the bank doesn’t repossess your hideously decorated triple-decker yacht. It’s crap, but it still sells since there are plenty of small-town minivan moms out there who need to be sheltered from irony. But listen to me here, you’d think I was trying to make up for not running any album reviews since Clinton was in office. Take it easy, America.

October 14, 2002
Abandon Katie Holmes, Brown Sugar, My Big Fat Geek Website, The Trainspotter, White Oldtimer

September 30, 2002
Moonlight Miles, Red Dragon, Sweet Homo Alabama, The Tuxedo

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