Glad you finally came around, America, welcome back to Entertainment Police. What have we got for you this week? Well, before we get to that, you ever notice how I always refer to the column by “this week” when we all damn well know it only runs once every two weeks? I’m sure you were wondering about that, unless you just take everything you read at face value and figured your brain was probably freaking out every other week and giving you a déjà vu of the previous week’s column on a rhythmic schedule, which is pretty bizarre but people believe in Scientology, too. But anyway, yeah I know it only runs every two weeks, I’m not trying to fool anybody there. That’s as often at the commune publishes, which is fine since they still pay us every week. Though come to think of it, paying us only on new-issue weeks sounds like exactly the kind of crap Red Bagel would try to pull, so don’t anybody read this column to him lest he gets any ideas from it. But the real reason I say “this week” is that there’s just no good way to refer to this two-week period without sounding like a complete nerd. You start messing around with terms like bi-weekly and that just sounds too much like a lesbian magazine title to me. So unless you want me to start saying “this half-month” like some kind of bed-wetting science fiction geek, I recommend you just take a chill pill over the whole thing.
So anyway, back to the original question: What have we got for you this week? What are you, slow to catch on? Movie reviews, dumbass!
In Theaters
Bed Boys II
It’s nice to live in an age when big action stars aren’t afraid to acknowledge the homoerotic undertones of the typical buddy action picture by ceasing to beat around the bush (the pun wasn’t intended but I’ll take it) and just doing a gay action flick every once in a while. For the longest time people acted like this was some huge deal, like you couldn’t have a couple of gay guys running around, shooting people and spouting catchphrases. Kudos to Will Smith and funnyman Laurence Fishburne for taking that bold step in style. True, this way neither of them can win the girl in the end, but it’s a nice change of pace when the filmmakers don’t have to staple a pair of boobs to a flimsy sketch of a character to give the heroes motivation. After all, what could be more crowd-pleasing than having the two leads go home together at the end, without having to watch some girl pretend like she can shoot a gun? Kudos and other snack products to you, Hollyweird.
Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Rock the Cradle of Love Virtual sex bomb Angelina Jolie reprises her role from the popular Billy Joel video “Rock the Cradle of Love” in this feature-length shake of the moneymaker. Few thought she’d have much of a career after that video, unless Winger got really popular again, but she’s done all right for herself. I guess it pays to be able to do a serviceable fake English accent; smart pinup girls should take note and work on that. Though that’s kind of like saying fat Olympic divers shouldn’t do the cannonball, probably doesn’t come up much. This film another shameless example of the trend toward giving movies titles that are longer than Ron Jeremy’s wang, but even at that it’s still better than the original title: Lara Croft Who is the Tomb Raider Stars (and By Stars We Mean She Both Kicks and Shows Some Ass) in The Cradle of Love: A Rocking Titfest. The longer title might have brought more pasty teenagers into the theaters, but the trailer for this film (available now on DVD as Lara Croft: Tomb Raider) has the same effect without using all those words.
Seabiscuit As anyone who’s seen Caddyshack knows, a “seabiscuit” is when you take a shit in a swimming pool, which obviously makes this a very bizarre name for a movie. It’s even more bizarre that Tobey Macguire is starring in this one, though the make-up people did a pretty great job of giving him a dorky red wig that does make him look like a seabiscuit. It takes a brave actor to wear something like that. Kind of reminds me of when George Clooney dressed up as a Latino pimp for that goofy Yo Brother, Where’s the Party? movie. This movie isn’t nearly as fun as that one, though, despite the hilariously inappropriate title. Personally I found it hard to follow, in part because I kept wandering out of the theater to see if there was anything better going on outside.
Spy Kids 3-D: Game Over After all these years, Hollywood finally gave me an excuse to drag my old 3-D glasses out of the bedroom closet, dust them off and cart them gingerly out to the metroplex for the first time since Jaws 3-D sucked all over the big screen. These actually aren’t even the glasses they gave me for that one, I have a free promotional pair from 7-11 from when they inexplicably showed Terms of Endearment in 3-D on Fox a few years back. It sucked, too, but it was fun to wear the glasses. Actually, all 3-D movies ever have sucked, including this one, but really they’ve always been thinly disguised excuses for people to get to wear the fun glasses. You can try to just wear them out and about town, but after about 20 minutes if you haven’t walked into a bus yet you’ll have a headache the size of Chinatown and your rods and cones will be all mixed up like they were a crazy breakfast cereal.
That’s all they paid me to write this week, America, so you’ll have to turn elsewhere to quench your passion for numerous letters strung together into pretty words, if this wasn’t enough to keep your boat floating. Until next time, America: Get out!
July 7, 2003
The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde, Pirates of the Caribbean The Ride The Movie: The Curse of the Black Pearl Harbor, Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Sequel, Terminator 3: Rise of the Meatheads
June 23, 2003
28 Days Later, Charlie’s Angels: Full Throttle, Jet Lag, When Harry Met Lloyd: Dumb and Dumberer
June 9, 2003
2 Fast 2 Furious, Daniel Day-Car, Hollywood Homicide, The In-Laws, The Italian Job, Love the Hard Way, Rugrats Gone Wild
May 26, 2003
The Matrix Rebooted, Finding Remo, Bruised Almighty, The Hoke, Downey with Love
May 12, 2003
The Lizzie McGuire Movie, Owning Mahowny, The Real Cancun, Whale Rider, X2: X-Men United
April 28, 2003
Anger Management, Bulletproof Monkey, Holes, House of 1000 Islands, Identity
April 14, 2003
Bend it Like Beck’s Ham, The Core, Head of State, A Man Apartment, Phone Booth
March 31, 2003
Ass! Ass! National Tango!, Bringing Down the House, Dreamcatcher, The Hunted, Piglet’s Big Movement, Tears of the Sun, Willard
2003 Oscars Special!
Oscar fever is upon us, ladies and gentlemen, and fear not: that puss-like discharge is a completely normal symptom.
March 3, 2003
Dark Blue, Old School, Spider, Studyhall Junkies, The Time-Life Christmas of David Gale
February 17, 2003
Cherdevil, How to Lose a Gut in 10 Days, The Jungle Book 2
February 3, 2003
Final Destination 2, The Recut, Shanghai Knights
January 20, 2003
Darkness Falls, A Guy Thing, Kangaroo Jack, The Hours, National Security
January 6, 2003
Confessions of a Dangerous Mind, Just Married Ashton Kutcher, Love Liza, The Pianist
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