Hola, America! That's about all the Spanish I know, but I wanted to give the column a little International flair this week. Why? Shit if I know.

Anyway, thanks for stopping by once again for all the reviews you care to peruse. Like the way I rhymed that? It may have taken half the morning, but the good shit doesn't just come squirting out the tube, as my grandfather always used to say. You have to cut the tube open with a utility knife and scrape out the insides with a spoon, FYI.

It probably wouldn't have taken so long, actually, but it took me a while to realize that nothing rhymes with orange. Weird, huh? But you didn't come here for the free poetry advice, unless you're insane, and if you are then say hi to my uncle Benny for me. As for the rest of you, how about a big ole movie review sandwich? Have at it!


In Theaters Now:

Open Water
Jesus, when I heard Disney was going to be making a film about a shark family, I thought it was going to be a whole lot more fun-loving than this! I almost shit in my popcorn the first time the great whites showed up, and by almost I mean I did. I don't know how the rest of this movie turned out, but take it from me, if you're ever looking for a hard time, try to return a turded-on bucket of popcorn with a story about how that's the way it was when you got it.

The Porn Supremacy
So say you're porn magnate Larry Flint, only you don't know it because some religious asshole shot you in the back and you can't remember anything except you like porn. But now some other scuzzbucket has horned in on your racket and is using your name: The Porn Identity! You could probably stop him with some kind of legal battle, but nobody wants to take your case because they're put off by the way you breathe audibly through your mouth all the time. So it looks like you're going to have to count on the last resort of the disenfranchised: karate! Sound implausible? You bet your double-D's it is, but Philip Seymour Hoffman mouth-breathes some serious life into the role, and it's a kick to watch him run over people's toes in his wheelchair and ride that thing down stairs in Berlin and shit. Finally there's a movie that makes Europe look worth visiting (did you know they have porn? And guns?) while filling a serious void in terms of action roles for the handicapped.

The Village People
After the copycats raised the ante on Signs, the terrifying Tesla biopic from horrormeister M. Night Shyamandala (pronounced "Smith"), with last year's release of the Grateful Dead scarefest House of the Dead, some wondered if Shyamalama would ever again be able to raise the stakes in the horrifyingly-bad rock band movie genre he had created. Well, doubters should eat another little piece of Janis Joplin's heart out this week, since Shyamalanda has come back swinging the biggest stick of them all, jumping straight past the double-dog-dare and into Village People territory. This was no small gamble, considering the danger that the film's target audience may be too young to remember just how scary the Village People really were, and that the young ones might get kind of excited and start to dance when the soundtrack plays "Y.M.C.A." instead of trying to crawl up their own assholes in terror like the older members of the viewing audience will do reflexively.

But even the tragically accidental pregnancies of the Y Generation are sure to scream up a lung once they realize they're surrounded by the cop, the Indian and the gay biker who lost his bike. The scariest part of all is that Shyanmalingi won't let you even see the Village People until half-way through the movie, leaving your imagination to fill in the blanks about how hideous their sexually-ambiguous costumes might be. Some might complain that the film's "twist" ending isn't surprising enough, but I for one had no idea that the Village People and the Oak Ridge Boys were the same guys.


And that's all he wrote, America. It's more traditional to say "she wrote," but that would just be wrong. Tradition's usually pretty sexist that way. Anyhow, hope you enjoyed our time together, but don't hurt yourself rushing to register for the fall semester, because, well because this isn't a college course, stupid.

July 12, 2004
Well spank it, America, we're back for another week of Entertainment Police and all that that implies. Hope you've been doing as well in your sad little life as Roland McShyster has been in his. We've got three new movies to review this week, which... (7/12/04)

June 28, 2004
The popular assumption is that Hollywood stopped making movies sometime last year, and have attempted to cover it up by releasing every television show ever made on DVD. Is it true? I'm not sure, but apparently there will be some movies newly... (6/28/04)

June 14, 2004
Whabang! And as simple as that we're back, America, for more of the movie review taste adults have grown to tolerate. It's grrrrrrrrr-decent! I'm your host, captain, and father figure Roland McShyster, here once again to brave the torrent of flops... (6/14/04)

May 31, 2004
There's apparently a new Roland Emmerich film out at the box office. Wall-to-wall disaster, gargantuan catastrophe destroying the world, an apocalypse like we've never seen before—I haven't heard anything about it, but I'll bet your last cent... (5/31/04)

May 17, 2004
Hello readers, and welcome to the greatest Entertainment Police ever. Sure, we can't say for certain that this truly will be the best the column's ever been, especially since I just started writing it, but we can hope, can't we? After all, it's a... (5/17/04)