Welcome back to me, America! Roland McShyster here, after the hiatus to end all hiatuses… hiati… hiya-hyacinth… uh, all multiples of hiatus! I'm back and on the attack, feeling refreshed after six weeks of boxin' and detoxin', as the saying goes. I'd like to take this opportunity to thank my good friend Orson Welch for filling my incredibly snazzy shoes while I was out, I'm sure he did a fine job and should I ever have a reason to read the columns he did while I was gone, that'll just confirm it. Keep your eyes peeled, we may just be bringing that young go-getter back for a guest spot the next time I go on vacation or lose the will to live. From the looks of my office he certainly generated more than his share of reader correspondence and acid-filled mail bombs. Kinda makes me feel like that guy Robin Williams played on Good Morning America to tell you the truth, and I thank you for that. Back by popular demand! But enough with the self-congratulatory bullshit, what say we get on to the movies?


In Theaters



Duplex

Somewhere out in Hollywood there's a giant magic 8-ball that's spitting out movie concepts, and I think they've forgotten how to shake the thing. In Duplex, a modern-day cross between Panic Room and Phone Booth, an engaged couple agrees to live inside a hollowed-out Xerox machine for one month as part of a radio station stunt, and the winner gets to keep the Xerox machine. Ben Stiller and Drew Barrymore star as a couple who dreams of a brighter future where they won't have to go down to Kinkos every time they need to copy a tax form or ransom note. The result is like My Dinner with Andre minus Andre the Giant's witty banter, and saying the movie makes you never want to live inside a copy machine with another person for a month is putting it mildly. There is a lot of potential for groundbreaking B.O. humor in the premise, but in a film where even the sex scenes are implausible, you have to take the whole thing with a big enough grain of salt to choke a salt donkey.

Out of Time

Now here we go with a prime example of the Hollywood's latest trend du jour: adapting popular albums into movies. So far the results of this experimental genre have been mixed at best, and any genre that was inaugurated by 1972's sterilizingly bad Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band has a lot of apologizing to do right out of the gate. But after the disappointing R.E.M./Neil Young joint project Monster's Ball in 2001, I'm surprised to say this film actually does justice to the hit R.E.M. album from 1991. My favorite chapter in the story is "Losing My Religion," where Denzel Washington plays a priest trying to figure out what to do with this naked guy who got shot by an arrow. What does it mean? Nobody knows, but it's funny because Denzel swears a lot.

School of Rock

When I heard that Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson was making his move to become a mainstream movie star, my first thought was: "Good luck, Jack Black couldn't even make that guy likeable!" Well, as usual, Hollywood set out to prove me wrong, and also as usual, Hollywood dropped the bong again. Don't get me wrong, Black is his usual spunky self as the math geek genius who is paid by the Rock's parents to tutor him with extreme prejudice, so that the Rock can get his G.E.D. and take over the family's fat rendering business. But it would take Marlon Brando to convince an audience that this meathead could pass a pregnancy test, let alone calculus, and this credibility gap exposes the film for what it really is: XXX without the action, skanks, guns or snappy grunted banter.

Shit Creek Manor

One word of advice to the unobservant: If you're going to buy somebody's creepy old haunted house and fix it up by candlelight at night, just don't. But if you decide to do it anyway, at least make sure it doesn't have some ironic name like Shit Creek Manor, because when the shit starts going down and you're running for your life from killer furniture or whatever, the irony is really going to piss you off, trust me. Second piece of advice for the film's producers: if the audience at the test screening is yelling "You gonna die, bitch!" when your heroine is in trouble and they boo when she gets out with only an involuntary hysterectomy, you just might have a turkey on your hands.

Wonderland

Val Kilmer is hilarious as the Mad Hatter in this, the lucky 10,000th adaptation of the Lewis Carroll classic. I don't know if they won a deluxe shopping spree or anything for being the 10,000th crew to make Carroll's book into a movie, but I hope they did. Lisa Kudrow was born to play Alice, a ditzy hippie chick from the Bay Area who follows a giant rat down a storm sewer and then has to play croquet with this scary-assed sewer clown. Great to see they finally got the facts right and played this one so close to the book, unlike the animated Disney version that sugar-coated Carroll's dark vision. Look out for Christina Applegate in a spot-on cameo as the sexy Cheshire Cat, and Cheech Marin chews up the screen as the burnout caterpillar who keeps insisting that "Alice isn't here, man!"

And that's the that that was this week, America. Hope you enjoyed it and would slap down a debutante to get more, because that's what we'll be doing next issue. See you then!

September 15, 2003
Hello commune readers, and welcome to mile three of the Orson Welch movie-review marathon. Can we make it to the finish line? Nobody knows, and even fewer care, but still we trek bravely onward. Not even the howls of derisive mockery, nor the... (9/15/03)

September 1, 2003
Welcome back readers, Orson Welch here again. Hope you haven't had to sit through anything horrible since the last time we met. To answer the common question in the reader emails I received this week, yes, Roland McShyster is still on hiatus and... (9/1/03)

August 18, 2003
Hello, commune readers and wayward porn seekers. Orson Welch typing to you from the soothing beige confines of my suburban home. I'll be filling in for the commune's regular film reviewer for the time being, as his recent lost weekend has stretched... (8/18/03)

August 4, 2003
Well how the hell are ya, America? Excuse my saucy tone, but I'm fuckin' smashed. That's right… wait, what were we talking about? Movies! Blow 'em out your ass, America! I'm fuckin' sick of movies, this week we're going to review vegetables.... (8/4/03)

July 21, 2003
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... (7/21/03)