All I've got here to offer this week is Hollywood's latest batch of "films," waiting to crap up your brain stem like arterial plaque. Will they do the job, numbing your barely-firing synapses to the pain of a life who's only success thus far as been contributing to already alarming obesity statistics and supersizing your prostate? I suppose, but don't blame Roland if your brain dies like a shark that stopped moving.


In Theaters



The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen

Sean Connery and a bunch of guys you wouldn't pay to wash your car play a ragtag assortment of comic book geeks and gaming nerds who are called upon to use their skills of denial, make-believe and lack of social acumen to save the world from a villain you won't understand if you've ever had sex or paid your own rent. While it is kind of fun to watch a bunch of nitwits pretend they're mostly fictional historical figures (and I'm talking about the characters here, though I suppose the same could be said about the actors themselves), seeing this movie is a high-risk proposition since unless you can convince people at the theater that you were actually coming out of Charlie's Angels 2 or some other breast-fest, the association alone may brand you permanently undateable.

Legally Blonde 2: Red, White and Blonde

Making a sequel to Bob Dylan's greatest album is a fool's gamble, but attempting to make that hypothetical sequel as a film is where that crackpot idea rubs up against genius. Luke Wilson and Reese Witherspoon finally pretty-face their way into the roles they were born to play, transforming themselves into Bob Dylan and Joan Baez for this gripping political musical. Wilson pulls off an uncanny impersonation of Dylan's dying Muppet singing voice and Witherspoon is smart to re-imagine Baez as a perky blonde who's more fun than anyone remembers the actual Baez being. Is it art? Hell no, but who sent you over here looking for art? Joke's on you, Poindexter.

Pirates of the Caribbean The Ride The Movie:

The Curse of the Black Pearl Harbor

Man, talk about a movie title that's tough to shoehorn into a request for a date. You're better off just taking her to the dog track. As for the movie itself, it's pretty much the same as the ride. You get a little wet and laugh at people getting raped and pillaged, and there's a funny dog. The problem is that the ride is only 20 minutes long, so the last hour and 40 minutes of the film are a bizarre revisionist vision of history where the Japanese bomb Detroit but are defeated by Cuba Gooding Jr. and the Shirelles, then are doomed to an eternity of karaoke-singing Motown hits badly as punishment. Sometimes it feels like you're watching a whole other movie, though they did throw in a few swashbuckling, cell-phone waving Japanese pirates here and there for continuity's sake. Every once in a while I think you just have to blame a movie on bad seafood.

Sinbad: Legend of the Seven Sequel

Brad Pitt reprises his role from the dwarf-themed slasher hit Seven for the inevitable sequel, this time struggling with his good-lookingness while trying to track down grandma-eating stand up comedian Sinbad. In this go-around, Catherine Zeta-Jones plays Pitt's constantly PMSing partner who has to be told not to be so macho all the time, and Michelle Pfeiffer reprises the Paltrow role as a head in a box. Some scoffed I'm sure, but I thought the choice of Sinbad as the villain was an inspired one. Anyone who's sat through Housesitter knows Sinbad's way scarier than Kevin Spacey, or even Spacey carrying around Anthony Hopkins in an infant huggie.

Terminator 3: Rise of the Meatheads

Only a barely-articulate robot played by barely-articulate Austrian muscledick Arnold Schwartzeneggar can save John Conner from a sub-literate gang of sent-from-the-future bodybuilders intent on kicking sand in Conner's face and stealing his girl. While the high-school bully theme and surf-guitar soundtrack might seem like an incongruous departure from the previous two films, it actually breathes new life into a series that was getting tired. After all, you can only fart around with the concept so long before the audience starts wondering why the machines didn't just send one of those unstoppable killer Terminators way back in time to kill Sarah Connor's great great grandma while she was making iced tea or something, before they had helicopters and one-handed cocking shotguns and exciting shit to get in the way. I'm sure if they went back far enough they could have found some slow-running ancestor who would've been easy enough to Ginsu, preventing the need for all these sequels.




And that's the way we were, America. Was it good? No, but it was on time, and that's all that matters in Europe. Join us next week when we see if the titles of the new releases spell anything funny in anagram form.