Less than a month now until the final Star Wars movie comes out. And I'm more excited than anyone. You know what this means: After May, and the ensuing hooplah dies, no more Star Wars movies—ever! No more insidious dialogue, no more melodramatic characters, no more dragging respectable actors into the mired mythos of his Grand Delusional Majesty, George Lucas. I'm tingling all over! But until that fateful day, and the impending review when it comes to DVD, let's take a look at Hollywood's lower-scale drivel.

Now on DVD:

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events
The first unfortunate event was author Lemony Snicket (if that is your real name) wrote a book and titled it with his own pen name. The second, the Harry Potter books made a commercially successful transition to film. The third, a Hollywood drug-addict/studio genius put two and two together and decided to make the Snicket books a film franchise. And fourth, and worst of all, they cast Jim Carrey. Carrey plays three of the characters, but all are basically the same character he's played in The Mask, Dumb and Dumber, Ace Ventura, and the repulsive film adaptation of The Grinch Who Stole Christmas, which in retrospect now seems delightfully subtle. So… Star Wars dies, but the insufferable film franchises are already lining up to take its place.

Blade: Trinity
Wesley Snipes' brooding vampire (half-vampire, I know, don't send me letters, you pathetic fanboys) teams up with Van Wilder in something pulled right from my nightmares. There was apparently trouble during production, because Snipes felt his character was losing focus in the film to the newer characters. I say they could have solved this problem by writing a script for the movie, but there I go again with my outlandish anti-Hollywood ideas. There are probably trinities out there I like less than this one, but none come to mind. Some Blade fans will probably be longing for the cohesive storytelling of The Matrix trilogy after seeing this one.

The Phantom of the Opera
AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHH! They're… singing! And it's all choreographed dancing! It's truly, devastatingly frightening. A Broadway musical by Andrew Lloyd Weber lumbering to life… it's enough to make George Romero piss his pants. In fact, I've soiled my own just thinking about it.

National Treasure
A lovely, pleasant surprise—a film so damned bad you could mock it down to each and every single frame. Nicolas Cage is a historian (ha!) whose family has been assigned the task of protecting the secret gold of our forefathers (ha ha!) which can be found by a map written on the Constitution (ha ha ha!). The studio wanted to make a film of The Da Vinci Code, but since the author wanted money to adapt the laughable book, they made their own laughable rip-off, which should hold us over until the real laughable adaptation finally gets made. This is yet another Cage/Jerry Bruckheimer collaboration, which lends further credence to my theory that Jerry Bruckheimer hates Nicolas Cage and wants to destroy his career. See The Rock, Con Air, and Gone in 60 Seconds for more proof. But whatever you do, don't see this.

I'm going to go wait in line for tickets now, dressed as Yoda. It's not a line for Star Wars tickets, but I've found that whenever I wait in line dressing as Yoda makes it much more comfortable. His robes are very soft and soothing.

April 18, 2005
Howdy Doody, Americans and others, Roland McShyster here, you there. Now that we've set the stage, let's get on to the movie reviews: Sadly, there's only one new movie out to review this week, but on the happy side, I've taken this opportunity to... (4/18/05)

April 11, 2005
No time for chatter this week. I have a full stock of Don Cheadle movies to review (they're Cheadle-icious) and them I'm off to see Sin City for the third time. I'm convinced this time I'll be able to make it to the end of the film, or at... (4/11/05)

April 4, 2005
El Vita Loca, commune readers! Whatever that means, it's time for some more Entertainment Police fun. And nobody needs a translator to know what that means! Unless they've never heard of Entertainment Police before. But even then a translator... (4/4/05)

March 28, 2005
I'm shocked into a rare non-sweating state by the wealth of first-run movies hitting DVD shelves in the next two weeks. So as much as I'd rather banter to fill dreadful column inches, I'm afraid I have actual reviews to get to this week. Lucky me…... (3/28/05)