Are you ready for the big summer blockbuster season? Translated: Have you bought sufficient quantities of air sickness bags? I wish I had the good fortune to be reviewing those, instead of clunkers that have already died at the box office. But good things come to those who wait, and the bad things to DVD quite soon. I'll get to them in time. For now, let's see future Target discount selections…

Now on DVD:

The Life Aquatic With Steve Zissou
Bill Murray reprises all his previous roles as a shallow and egotistical asshole, slightly aloof and sharing a joke only he's privy to, but this time it's set to the backdrop of a lot of Cousteu-esque nonsense. It's hard not to like a Wes Anderson movie. But then, it's hard to see a Wes Anderson movie, they're so obtuse and purposely idiosyncratic your attention can wander during the stylized opening credits and never return. Owen Wilson sports an accent never before heard by humankind, and certainly not in the south, which is where his character is from.

In Good Company
The only worse thing would be being in Bad Company, or a regular on Three's Company. In fact, this also stars a cast member from a dying sitcom, the oddly-named Topher Grace from That '70s Show, as the young up-and-comer in this barely-updated script intended for Michael J. Fox in the 1980s. Think "the American Pie crew does Wall Street" and you're on the right track. In fact, these are the American Pie guys. Somehow they're still working. Dennis Quaid and this decade's indie darling Scarlett Johansson also star.

Assault on Precinct 13
In 1976 John Carpenter made a nasty low-budget film about the siege on a nearly-empty police station; that film at least had a raw and unphotogenic 1970s sheen to it. This remake strip it of any such claims, and saddles us with Ethan Hawke as well. Think Die Hard, and then remove any outside chance of enjoying that film, and you've got this rental. Might be handy, though, if you're hoping to expose yourself to mindless violence ala A Clockwork Orange and undergo the famed Ludovico treatment.

Team America
The guys from TV's South Park prove their relevancy is fading on the big screen as well. A series of puppet jokes, celebrity cheap-shots, culturally insensitive and insulting gags, and asinine populist political messages bombard all the viewers of this celluloid drivel. Though judging by the box office take, at least there were very few casualties of this bombing.


I wish I had more for you, but that's it. Oh, wait—of course I'm glad I don't have more. If anything, I wish I had less. Hollywood should be limited to doing five movies a year. Maybe then they'd actually concentrate on something that didn't spew vomit on us. But then again, they'd probably just pack more special effects into the chunks. That's Welch signing off, over and out.

May 2, 2005
Stick that in your pipe and smoke it, America. What? I don't know, I assumed you had some kind of tobacco handy. Way to let us all down. I thought you might at least have some of that green plastic Easter-basket grass. Cancer? Yeah, that would... (5/2/05)

April 25, 2005
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... (4/25/05)

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)