Hot damn, America!

Against all odds we’re back for another year of Entertainment Police love. Few would have thought we’d last this long, and most of them also believe in unicorns and platonic friendships. But here we are, in the abstract sense, as I’m here now and you’ll be there at some later date, and we’re both looking at these same words. Only it’s not really equal since I don’t know what the rest of this is going to say and you can skip ahead if you’re in a “Fuck it All” kind of mood. Not really fair for me, but I guess that’s why I’m the one getting paid, to deal with that uncertainty.

Now we look ahead to the coming year of 2003 and wonder if we’ll see better movies than we did in 2002. Ha, just kidding. We all know that 2002 sucked a big novelty disc, so the real question is how much better 2003 will be. I’m hoping the answer is:

A whole shit of a lot.

On to the movies!

In Theaters

Confessions of a Dangerous Mind
There was a lot of shit going on in this movie: the CIA, Ralston-Purina, BET, disco, crop rotation, gongs, Margaret Cho, ninja breakdancing, bad hats, Julia Roberts barking in Morse code, dust, rubber boots full of salmon, the Pointer Sisters, Wheel of Fortune, underoos, sex with robots, John Travolta’s childhood retainer, cashew chicken, nuclear autumn, that little alcoholic kid from E.T., saws, Golden Books, Rip Torn, and the list goes on and on. To be honest, I wasn’t sure when the movie started or if it’s even over now… I left the theater but I keep seeing things that make me think I might have just dozed off in the middle and I’m still dreaming. If that’s the case I’m going to be pissed because I hate typing my columns twice.

Just Married Ashton Kutcher
I guess he’s cute and all, I mean, it’s not like I’d know. But if I were a girl I guess I could see it. If I were a girl. And I was really drunk. But, apparently this Kutcher guy is enough of a dreamboat that tying his knot is a common fantasy among the 12-24 set and a handful of gay sex columnists, so here we get a movie about it. And the lucky girl who gets to pretend to do it more convincingly than most (because of the Hollywood props and whatnot) is Brittany Murphy, who paid her dues by getting her trailer park on with Eminemineminemi… Marshall McLuhan. I guess the movie turned out fine, though to be honest I thought there’d be more explicit honeymoon sex than there was. But I felt that way about Father of the Bride, too, so what are you going to do. All in all it compares favorably to other teenage girl wish fulfillment film such as Monkeybone and Drop Dead Fred Durst.

Love Liza
Philip Dustin Hoffman is fantastic as Liza Minelli in this warped tale of a singer coping with her gay lover’s suicide by having everyone call her Rick and pretend she’s a man. Talk about bizarre; shouldn’t John Malkovich be in there somewhere? It almost got too weird for me when I thought Orson Welles was in the movie, too, but in the end it turned out that was only Kathy Bates. She should do him at parties; I think she could clean up.

The Pianist
Once again the Farley brothers prove that you can’t keep a good man down, nor two mediocre men with gross senses of humor. Nor one midget-sized man who walks around in a tuxedo and has a gigantic dong, neither. I’m not sure where the midgets-with-giant-dicks fascination came from, but at least the Farleys put a creative spin on it by making the guy a concert pianist who makes his living playing a baby baby grand. He also gets into plenty of trouble with married women and as I’m sure you can guess he gets drop-kicked a few dozen times and spends part of the movie wedged in a fat man’s asshole.

I’m not going to review them, but I just wanted to mention that Steve Guttenberg and Kirk Cameron both have new movies coming out this week, so if you’re feeling shitty about your life there’s some five-dollar therapy for you.

And that’s that, folks, I hope we’ve rung in the New Year proud. Don’t forget to check back in two more weeks when we’ll shake the world by doing the exact same thing for like the ten billionth time.

December 23, 2002
25th Hour, Catch Me if You Can, Gays of New York, Lords of the Ring: The Out-of-Towners, Max

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