Trainspotting I saw the film "Trainspotting" with a couple of friends I hadn't seen in several months, and another I hadn't seen since in... well... ever really. I'd never seen him before! Well, actually that's not true. I found out later that I had met him one night when a friend of mine and I went to his house party and sort-of "stole" some of his guests and lured them back to our house party. So I met him that night again. But I excurse... "Trainspotting": I don't understand what has the film to do with spotting trains? I counted two incidences of trains in the entire film together totaling in screen time less than 3 seconds. I did detect, though, a subtle but pervasive heroin motif. Is the name Trainspotting a heavily veiled reference to heroin or heroin-related activity? Would somebody please clue me in?

Dignified Self Esteem to the Near Extent of Hubric Arrogance and Prematurely Formulated Opinion or Evaluation. My lady-friend Victoria, the trailblazing Jane Austen fan that she is, and her apartmentmates (also loyal followers of the generous wordsmith Ms. Austen) somehow got me to watch the 5-hour film version of the book Pride and Prejudice. Actually to imply that I was coerced is unfair; I willingly brought myself to watch it because I realized I could never accuse her of not giving a film like Jackie Chan's "First Strike" a chance if I didn't. For the first few minutes one can't help but wonder "Did people really talk like that?" and "I didn't think you were allowed to use 12 $5-words in one sentence." Still, these are mostly upper-class English folk we're dealing with so I sure they can afford it. Austen is a little like Shakespeare (minus the timeless poetry and multi-layered meanings) in that it takes a couple of minutes to become acclimated to the language, which is quite cumbersome and remarkably verbose. Perhaps that is why the film is 5 hours long.The film, and its nearly indistinguishable siblings do however have the dubious honor of being the paradigmatic example of a "Chick-flick".

A Lemur Called Rollo I read various reviews of "Fierce Creatures" that railed it for not being as good as "A Fish Called Wanda", and for being the bastard son of its predecessor. Well so what? The bastard son of Zeus could still kick your mortal butt. I personally thought it as good if not better. But then again John Cleese can do no wrong in my book. Cleese's films are marked by the rare hallmark of intricate and clever plot laced with unadulterated absurd slapschtick. The proverbial "mad props", of course, to Kevin Kline for his skizophrenic role(s).

The Last Straw I'll admit I went to see "The Fifth Element" for the same reasons I went to see "Independence Day": for the special effects. Though conceptually a little hokey, it is visually stunning, wittily written, and quite the spectacle in editing. It took me until the end to realize that it wasn't the n-th installment of the "Die Hard" series. In the final scene the movie diverges from the formula in that Bruce doesn't end up trying to rekindle his repeatedly-failed marriage. Instead he gets to consummate the ill-developed "love interest" between himself and the perfect being. You'd think she, being perfect, would also have perfect taste. Bruce Willis should be the universally cited example for déjà vu. Seeing him in a movie always leaves you with that peculiar feeling that you've seen this same thing before. I liked the villain, he was new—a mild departure from the Hollywood archetype; and the movie contains the the two best post-climax comments ever! It is sure to become a cult classic.

Don't Cry For My Acting. At Vicki's prompting I saw "Evita". The score was, in my opinion not that great; certainly not as great as was made out by the hype (a surprise, no?). The singing impressed me none and more often than not the chorus was altogether unintelligible. Antonio Banderas? carrying a tune?... please Antonio, stick to your scriptless sex scenes with your seductive second-rate speech and sultry sidelong stares because you sing like a seal being slaughtered. Madonna plays a bad B-movie actress who sleeps with numerous Latin men... that's like Courtney Love playing a tragic exhibitionist junkie. Also it takes more willing suspension of disbelief than I can muster to buy Madonna playing a 15-year-old Evita.

Huh-huh, errrr, this sucks! When they were on Liquid Television they were good. When they got their own show they were stretching it. Now, following in the footsteps of the Flintstones and the Brady Bunch, Beavis and Butthead have graduated to the big screen in "Beavis and Butthead Do America". Assurance once again that if you missed your favorite show on TV it's nice to know you can catch it later at the movies. Something was lost in the translation though. They're still America's most successful underachievers, only this time... they're not really funny. The movie applies the same marketing formula as the glut of Greatest Hits albums of dead, defunct or drugged recording artists of yesteryear. Take hundreds of hours of material, condense it into two hours, give it a blitz of vigorous media hype... and charge you more for it.

The Fugitive 2: This time there are 2! If, like me, you admire Larry Fishbourne, and have only seen Steven Baldwin in "The Usual Suspects" I suggest you flat-out not see "Fled". I shudder to think that this same man who nearly outshined Mr. Shakespeare himself Kenneth Branaugh in "Othello", was even capable of such poor cinema. My theory is that the script was written in 40 seconds and consisted of the words "Plot, characters and dialogue: see Catalogue of American Movie Staples, Cliches, and Standards." It also seemed to borrow much from John Woo's Wish List of Gratuitous Violence.

Powers, Austin Powers If I were to recommend a movie for you to see that movie would be "Austin Powers: International Man of Mystery". I haven't laughed like that since I heard that the former neglected child Dennis Rodman married himself. I thank the Lord I was wearing a belt else my sides would've surely split. I'll be the first to admit that a man being hit in crotch by a football will get an infinitely bigger laugh than the most intelligent quip on the Tracy Ullman show... if done right. For AP:IMoM that biggest laugh for me was the Myers/Arnold "Who does #2 work for." restroom scene even if it was, if you'll excuse the phrase, just so much toilet humour. I laughed for much the same reason that I laughed at Monty Python's "Fish Slapping Dance". The Biggest Laugh is not to be confused with the Best Scene which I thought was Dr. Evil's personal testimony to the support group.One thing you won't pick up from the trailers and is therefore quite unexpected is that the most engaging character is the villain Dr. Evil; and it is the hero who is the one-trick, one-dimensional, one-lining stereotype.

Beverly Hills Nincompoop Move over "Dumb and Dumber" there's a new standard for Bad Movie in town: "Beverly Hills Ninja". I must commend the successive generations of writers of that new classic genre that is the "Chris Farley Movie" for reliably coming up with what seems to be endless new situations in which Mr .Farley crashes into things. Big clumsy fat guy falls down, runs into things, knocks things over, hits himself... should be bed-wettingly funny right? Well it could be if the writers had attended the lecture on Novelty and Originality in movie school instead of copying the notes from the guys who went on to make the "Police Academy" series.

Batman... 5 is it? Apparently Hollywood is out of ideas. No one in the film industry seems to be able to come up with an original premise, so they're having to borrow ideas from novels, plays, TV series, video games, other movies even, and of course comic books, as is the case of this latest work of conventional plagiarism: the movie adaptation of the comic book "Spawn". As far as I can tell, the movie is a $7.50, 100-minute, conventionalized, passive-entertainment, permutation of the first few episodes of the comic. Given its comic book origin it's understandable that much of the movie's premise and plot is quite unfeasible. Given the time restraints and America's dwindling attention span it's not surprising that the characters are poorly developed. And given his failing career it's all but expected that Martin Sheen should play a shallow, unpunctuated, cookie-cutter villain. But there is absolutely no excuse given the altogether stunning visual effects for the ridiculous "Satan" image. This is supposed the epitome of evil, the Lord of Darkness, the apotheosis of bad, the devil for Christ's sake! The dog from "Toy Story" was more intimidating than this idiotic, waxy CGI.

Far Gone "Fargo" gave me chills. No, not because it was scary or suspenseful but because that place looks cold! I live in Ithaca which is a little like the Antarctic in the middle of winter but not quite so hospitable to organic life, so watching this movie gave me empathy pains. I can understand whyfor all the killing and the blood with the axe and the thing and the thing. I live in a place much like that and come February it would take far less than $80,000 for me to hack up my roommate and stuff him into a chipper-shredder. Call me depraved, but I laughed through most of the movie simply because it was one absurd situation after another... but all true apparently, which makes it even more absurd. A pregnant Police Chief whose husband paints stamp designs ? You can't make up stuff like that. Also it was funny because I don't know them.

Fishtar "'Waterworld' is professionally made with a good production design and an original idea" --Chad Polenz ... "Waterworld" is a futuristic epic set in a post-holocaust world sparsely populated by a few survivors. The landscape is barren and inhospitable, humans survive by either banding together in small agglomerates in isolated fortified compounds, or as self sufficient lone drifters, or as belligerent scavengers  who prey upon others by conquest and destruction. It is a world of limited resources featuring a barter economy in which some of the simple essentials of life have become the most valuable of commodities. The survivors subscribe to a feral mythology built from tidbits of 20th century culture. The story follows one particular drifter who visits one of these communities for the purposes of trade. Though honorable he is distrusted and detained by them. His fate is conveniently interrupted by a vicious attack by the scavenger clan who overpower and destroy the compound. But the drifter escapes... wait a minute... isn't this "Mad Max 3"? The nihilistic look and feel, the moody loner with the better-than-average transportation, the difficult, enigmatic child,  a flying machine, the quest for some legendary paradise...

Chasing an Amy-John Well it's about bloody time there was a human interest story that didn't induce narcolepsy. God bless you Kevin Smith for your unique brand of candid storytelling; for your not distasteful treatments of heretofore taboo subject matter; and for your inconceivable ability to make a film featuring the most sordid sexual practices entirely devoid of graphic nudity.

Car Pool What do you get when you put Jackie Chan and Chris Tucker together in a big-budget movie? Well if you're a producer, distributor, or sponsor of such an endeavour you get one movie for the box-office draw of two. Chan fans will go to see Jackie, and suckers for Tucker will go to hear Chris. However if you're Joe Movie-goer what you get is a freakish chimera of two very disparate, irreconcilable film genres. "Rush Hour" is two movie types sewn together in much the way Frankenstein's monster was and draped in a Buddy-Cop ensemble. I haven't seen enough Tucker to judge the effect of the budget and co-casting, but in Chan's case it hurts like an 18th century corset. When restricted by the pace of the American popular movie, the managed-risk ass-covering of studio insurance policies and  the distraction of a loud-mouth second fiddle, Chan's work becomes really quite pedestrian. On the upside, perhaps it will induce people who only watch top-40 films to investigate this Chan fellow's other work, or pick up that movie about those Negroes.

Flood Natural disasters are apparently the flavor of the year we've had tornadoes, earthquakes, volcanoes... 3 of them! I guess somebody had to do flood. "Hard Rain" is to film what putting a clock in a radio is to invention. It's just the same old stock action thriller with much gun fire, explosions, an unlikely partnership, and treacherous lecherous local-boy bad guys who must establish their total evilness by violating every moral standard of humanity—it's not enough for them to be thieves and traitors, they have to be murderers and rapists too. It features that old staple the High-Speed Chase except this time with boats.

Pointless Marlon Wayans might just be the black Jim Carrey. All he needs is better writers, and fewer gratuitous excuses to get "assed out". Apart from being a weak concept injected into a weak story "Senseless" is unnecessarily nasty with a baffling overdose of anal references. It does live up to its name though, it is a senseless waste of David Spade, and a few million dollars that could've fed all the war orphans in Vietnam.

Something Old, Something New Mike Score's hair in the 80s. There is absolutely no reason for a ticket agent to ask a customer if he likes Flock of Seagulls in a 20 second exchange, with no preamble and no prompting even if said ticket agent does have a Michael Score hair-do. The only reconciliation that I can imagine is that perhaps he asks this of everyone he serves. Even so it's a painfully forced 80s reference. Other than that "The Wedding Singer" is a regular love story, easily mistaken for a 2-hour infomercial for an 80s' compilation album... or two! endorsed by the new rising career of Adam Sandler and the ironically indestructible career of Drew Barrymore.

The Phantom Movie Well I guess George Lucas now officially has the biggest penis in Hollywood. Considering the nothing-short-of hysteria preceding the release of "Star Wars. Episode I: The Phantom Menace" this movie could have been a 15-minute 8 mm B&W home video of Lucas playing dress-up with his Oscars and it still would have grossed over... one hundred... billion dollars! All right; blatant racial stereotypes, thinly veiled rip-offs of every popular mythology, absurd pseudo-scientific explanation of "The Force", and altogether innocuous bad-guy—who has all of 3 lines, looks like a balding Bart Simpson with psoriasis, and gets killed!!!—aside, it was entertaining as a spectacular special-effects extravaganza! Ewan McGregor must be stroked for his reasonable facsimile of Sir Alec Guiness's vocal mannerisms; as should Natalie Portman [... Mmmm Natalie Portman...] for a dual role executed convincingly. But I still don't understand how you elect a queen; and why a 15-year-old KISS fan.