December 23, 2002
S’up, America? Roland McC here, bringing you the movie review love. Right, like you thought it was suddenly going to be Jules Verne or something. Not this week. This week, it’s all about the pinnacle of the movie season, the two-week movie release orgy that comes at the end of every year. We take a look at the best of the best below, except for Chicago. I had a bad experience there once, so I’ll be goddamned if I’m going to review their movie and give them free publicity. Everyone else, however, is on my good side. Drink in the glitz and have a Merry Christmas for me. On to the movies!

In Theaters

25th Hour
Another touching story of our educational system’s failure to teach basic math and number-counting skills to America’s youth. Ed Norton is at the top of his skinny-moron form as the nincomboob who is constantly being smacked around by his hefty sidekick Ralph (played in fine pre-heart-explosion form by Philip Dustin Hoffman) when he makes reservations for 13 o’clock lunch or enrages a prostitute by asking if he can get change back from a five. While at times the comedy outweighs the drama, like when Ed makes a bar bet that he can suck off an entire football team, and then finds out how many guys there are on a football team, the film’s deeper moments resonate and touch on important issues for counters and can’t-counters alike.

Catch Me if You Can
I won’t lie and pretend that I’ve ever not wished that Leo DiCaprio would get waxed by a floor buffer at the airport and put us out of our moviegoing misery, it’s pretty much been a constant mantra for me over the last several years. At least since Critters 3. God, he ruined that whole movie. And then Hollywood had to go and rub him all in our faces with that whole Titanic fiasco. That set off a chain of events that led to the trailer for The Beach being played before every movie shown in America for six years, which about drove me out of my own ass. But all that being said, I have to admit that he’s perfectly cast as Lucky the Leprechaun in this latest arc of Stephen Spielberg’s personal spiral down into weird-movies-with-sappy-endings land. You might as well pass out the Oscar now because Leo IS Lucky the Leprechaun and he WILL mess you up if you get too close to his Lucky Charms. People can drool all they want about James Cagney staying in character for six months to shoot The Grinch, leading to the ruin of his social life, but DiCaprio has spent his entire life in character for this role. And I’ll never look at a box of freeze-dried sugar clods in quite the same way again.

Gays of New York
The amazing success of last year’s Lords of the Ring has led to a resurgence of interest in gay cinema that this country hasn’t seen since Tootsie. While most of the resulting films have been of questionable quality and authenticity, like Arnold Schwarzenegger’s Gay of the Jackal and Rutger Hauer’s Gay Motorcycle Gunfight, a few gems have snuck through. Marvin Scorcese’s Gays of New York is a gripping and hard-hitting drama about the long-forgotten 1970’s riots between New York gays who loved disco and those who thought disco was tacky. Some lessons of history may be hard to look at, but for that very reason they should never be forgotten.

Lords of the Ring: The Out-of-Towners
Look, I know they say they planned this thing as a trilogy all along, but I started to doubt that the second I heard the second installment would feature Steve Martin boxing Goldie Hawn. For one thing, neither of them is gay at all. At least Steve Martin isn’t. He’s straight as tube socks with the stripes across the top. I don’t know about Goldie. You can never be totally sure with women, they can seem totally straight forever and then one day you turn on the TV and bam! They’re making out with Madonna. But whichever way her wind blows, this was an amazingly poor sequel to one of the greatest gay boxing movies ever. It’s like they took the name, slapped it on a movie they were already making, and pretended it had something to do with the original, like Blair Witch 2 or Richard III. There’s a load of hype over this one already, but I can’t help but think that audiences are going to be hoppin’ mad when Goldie goes home with Kurt Russell at the end.

Max
Look, you can call the guy with the little Hitler mustache Max or Hans or whatever you like, but every American born before 1980 is still going to recognize that the movie’s about Hitler. Might as well get it out there in the open, up on the marquee even, call your movie something like Hitler Had a Little Dick and you might even win a Golden Globe. Which isn’t much, I know, but you can trade them in for half-off a shrimp dinner at Sizzler these days, and that’s pretty sweet. Anyway, Cusack is good as the anal little frau-beater, but I think his innate likeability worked against him in this role… they really needed somebody like James Woods or O.J. Simpson to give the audience a proper target for flung popcorn and the shouting of misinformed German stereotypes. Personally, I would have liked to see Robin Williams tackle the role, that would have made for some good insane fun, but he’s probably still getting death threats from Patch Adams so I understand why he was unavailable.

That’s that, my lovely American pies. The creamy cream of the crop. All that’s left is to soak up the movie glory and ride that high as long as nature will allow. But remember, don’t hit the Thunderbird too hard in your post-holiday-movie-season depression, because there’s always next year. It may seem far off now, a minute speck on a distant horizon, but trust me, it’ll be here faster than you can say “I’m wasting my life.” See you in the new year, friends and neighbors.

December 9, 2002
About Shit, Cannibalize That, The Hot Chick, Maid in Manhattan, Star Trek: Eminemisis

November 25, 2002
Adam Sandler’s Eight Crazy Nuts, Diet Another Day, Extreme P.O.S., The Friday After Next Friday, Wes Craven Presents: They...

November 11, 2002
8 Miles of M&Ms, The Santa Clause 2, Punch-Drunk Love, I Spy, Femme Fatale

October 28, 2002
Auto Focus, Formula 51, Ghost Ship, Jackass: The Movie, The Truth About Charlie, Waking Up in Reno With Billy Bob Thornton

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