Here’s the choice: Get out of the house for a while and see an appallingly awful action movie, or stay at home and watch some hideous 6-month-old pretentious Oscar-contenders. Either way, you lose, but your expenses are reduced when you suffer in the privacy of your own home.

Now on DVD:

Dear Frankie
Dickens himself would call this sickeningly sentimental claptrap. Then he'd probably wonder why, after miraculously coming back from the dead after all this time, he decided to waste his precious minutes watching it. Let this be a lesson to you, Scrooge—don't make the mistakes I have. They don't make small films much more empty and without substance.

Prozac Nation
One of the many box office zeroes Miramax stockpiled over the past few years, and is in a hurry to dump now that the Weinsteins are leaving. Maybe dull backstory to a lot of you, but it has to be more fascinating than this dismal, nasty, mean-spirited "story" of a woman, convincingly portrayed by large-breasted Christina Ricci. A lot of psychology is missing from this psychological study, but the Goth crowd will make a totem out of it.

A Very Long Engagement
At least it gets the truth in advertising award. Two hours and 14 minutes of a World War I romance that has less resolution than the war itself. Jean-Pierre Jeunet brings the artful, intelligent storytelling he perfected in Alien Resurrection and the thick-skinned wartime bravery of the French to this expensive foreign mess. It's not Amelie; it's not even American Pimp.

Million Dollar Baby
It's funny how when you're a Hollywood darling all the normal insults become compliments. Eastwood's unimaginative and rudimentary style becomes "stripped-down" and "stark." Slow and morose becomes "uncompromisingly dark" and "methodically paced." Chaotic and schizophrenic becomes "shocking twist ending." I won't even waste time spoiling it to get it even more attention for being "controversial." The fact it won out easily as the best picture of the year, according to the St. Elmo's Fire crowd that is modern Hollywood, worried me to no end. It's predictable and malicious, sailing on the casting of likable stars. Anything else is being sucked into the Clint Eastwood vacuum.

Hmm. Maybe it's not too late to get out to the theater. At least you don't have to pretend to like The Dukes of Hazzard to feel intellectual.

June 27, 2005
Yeah, yeah, yeah, America, I know it's time for another blistering weekload of on the mark movie reviews, on the money insights, and on the couch opinions. I'll get to that in a second; right now I'm trying to figure out what makes this little... (6/27/05)

June 20, 2005
No time for chit-chat. Hollywood has bombarded us with first-run DVD releases after months of drowning us in TV. So let's check out some of them. Now on DVD: Coach Carter A real novelty: Inner-city black and Hispanic kids who... (6/20/05)

June 13, 2005
Yola, America. That's a new hybrid black/Spanish greeting I just made up, I think it's going to be a big crossover hit. Start sending in your royalty payments now, kids. Anyway, we're here for one thing and one thing only this week: getting paid. I... (6/13/05)