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8 Mile Steve Gadd   Basic Cable   07 April 2005 I thought that one of VH1's "Movies That Rock" would provide a bit of music as I worked on the computer. Instead, there was hardly any music to be heard, probably so the viewer can better imagine a violin to accompany the sob story of Marshall Mathers' youth.

Amelie Steven Krise   My Basement on IFC   16 January 2007 Kind of an absurd, French Allie McBeal. And, yes, the narration was annoying.

Blacktop Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   18 January 2003 Bad movie starring MeatLoaf as a psycho trucker who kidnaps Kristin Davis and leads her boyfriend, Bucky the Human Chipmunk, on a long chase to get her back. This had the kind of really bad writing or editing that made me spend most of it going "Wha..? But didn't they just...? So can't she...? But why would he...? Isn't that the...?"

Bubba Ho Tep Jaqi Ross   E Street Cinema   11 January 2004 Based on the Bram Stoker Award nominee short story by acclaimed author Joe R. Lansdale, Bubba Ho-tep tells the true story of what really did become of Elvis.

Children of the Corn: Revelation Julie Gephart   Rental   12 October 2002 Watched in honor of having gone through a corn maze earlier in the day. Instead of fear, it prompted a great deal of "What?" with a little "huh?" on the side. I still have no idea if the corn itself was somehow evil, or why there was blood in it, or what, in fact, was happening to the various dead people, some of whom seemed to emerge again as children and some of whom did not. Maybe I needed to see the first movie in order to understand this one.

Coffee and Cigarettes Ray Hunley   Netflix DVD   27 June 2005 Stupid people having insipid conversations while acting like idiots. The best thing director Jim Jarmusch ever did remains playing the Frostee Cream Boy in Sling Blade. Or maybe Ghost Dog. Maybe. One bonus point for putting Tom Waits in the cast.

Elf Ray Hunley   Comcast On Demand   13 November 2005 Oh, it was pitiful. Will Ferrell's mock-wide-eyed-innocence act was old long ago. I do hope to see more of Zooey Deschanel, though.

Fantastic Voyage Julie Gephart   Basic cable   23 November 2003 Aside from the sight of Raquel Welch in a wetsuit, this was pretty much an excruciating two-hour version of the two-minute Body Wars ride at Disney World. Sadly, not once did I feel inclined to shout “woo!” and grip the arms of my chair.

Final Verdict Julie Gephart   Basic cable   19 June 2003 The description was "A 1900s lawyer travels with his tomboy daughter." The movie was... unfortunately not. Rather, it was the story of a precociously self-righteous little girl who had what I'd call a psychotic obsession with her father. Not only would she trail him all over town as he attempted to do his job, but when he would try to dislodge the obnoxious little tick, she'd sneak after him anyway, lurking in hallways to spy on his every conversation, the better to ensure that he was meeting her high moral standards. She even got up repeatedly in the middle of the night to check out what he was doing. Dude, there's a word for your kid, and that word is "stalker."

Follow the River Julie Gephart   Basic cable   24 January 2004 It’s not like I am a big fan of savagery, but come on! This was the lamest movie ever. Women get kidnapped by a band of Indians, and… nothing bad happens. They aren’t hurt in any way, and they just go on living peaceful lives in the Shawnee village. When they decide to escape, they just walk away and go home, and nobody chases them. Nothing bad! Ever! Well, I guess Renee O’Conner disappears, but she was a whiny loser anyway.

Four Brothers Kristin Schrock   Oakley Drive-In   20 August 2005 Disproved my theory that any movie is good at the drive-in. Also, Marky Mark is getting old--it's very depressing. The best part was the previews because they had been spliced in backwards (picture and sound) which made that new Monster-Bat movie look awesome.

Free Enterprise Julie Gephart   Basic cable   12 October 2003 I ran across this on live television and somehow got stuck. I watched COMMERCIALS for this, people!

From Here to Eternity A Bennett   Hollywood Video VHS   01 November 2003 The lei has spoken. Deborah Kerr will never return to Hawai'i to again witness how good-looking is one Burt Lancaster in an abbreviated pair of swim trunks. Poor Deborah.

Gladiator Tony Pisarenkov   DVD   27 November 2002 Bombastic and melodramatic in true Hollywood fashion, both the story and the characters are shallow and devoid of substance

God is Great, and I'm Not Steve Gadd   DVD   21 February 2005 A weak comedy and cure for any residual affection for Audrey Tautou, who plays an annoying brat.

Gone in Sixty Seconds Julie Gephart   Basic cable   16 February 2003 I hate Nicolas Cage. I hate car chases. I hate movies about dirty thugs engaging in car chases. The fact that I watched this movie at all can only be a measure of my dedication to Angelina Jolie.

Gunga Din (1939) A Bennett   TiVo'd from AMC am   30 November 2003 Or, as everyone in the movie says it: Goong-uh Deen. The silent film-esque over-the-top acting, sets, and Cary Grant in heavy eyeliner make it rather difficult to rationalize that this film dates from the same year as both 'Gone With the Wind' and 'The Wizard of Oz'. A positively prancing Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. doesn't help reconcile the gap between his (supposedly manly) character and GWTW's dangerously, powerful leading man Rhett Butler, either. Lastly, can you EVER watch a film in 2003 populated by a cast of non-Indians pretending to BE Indian Thugges and take it seriously? The young water carrier character, Gunga Din, here is played by an over-40 Brooklyn Jew.

Harry and the Hendersons Julie Gephart   Basic cable   22 April 2004 Another one spit out on the “Award Winners” list from TiVo, although this one was just for makeup. It was a bad movie. However, it was filmed around Seattle, so I got to glory for a while in the wonderful spot where I live, and that never hurts. Also – the dad? Annoying alien John Lithgow. The mom? Ralphie’s mom from “A Christmas Story.” The boy? Scary creepy Billy Mahoney from Flatliners. The evil hunter? Hercule Poirot. And finally, revealed to me courtesy of imdb, Harry was none other than both the Predator and also the super tall doctor from one of my favorite childhood shows, Misfits of Science. If you want to watch a bunch of actors that you recognize doing stupid things in beautiful scenery, then this is just the movie for you.

Heist Steve Gadd   DVD   25 February 2005 This movie is a festival of plot holes, wooden acting, and stilted dialogue -- the dialogue apparently director Mamet's trademark (he used a metronome to coach his actors in earlier movies). The opening scene was just fine, why couldn't the rest of the film keep up?

Hijacked: Flight 285 Julie Gephart   Basic cable   21 February 2003 Xena's nemesis Callisto disguises herself as a modern-day woman who helps hijack an airplane. Being the female, she goes through some qualms of conscience feeling sorry for the "cute" (obnoxious) kid who had the seat next to her, but in the end she stays strong in her evil ways.

Hollywood Homicide Steven Krise   My basement   17 October 2005 I believe the screenwriter and director made use of every single "cop / buddy movie" cliche imagined since 1971. No, seriously, I defy you to find a cliche that didn't show up in this turd. Harrison Ford was the only saving grace.

House of 1,000 Corpses Ray Hunley   HBO On Demand   13 November 2005 I don't even like horror movies. This one was derivative (although I admit there's a fine line between derivative and homage), witless, unimaginatively directed, and just generally lame. One point each for casting Karen Black and Walton Goggins, even though the latter went out like a punk.

It Started in Naples Julie Gephart   Basic cable   21 February 2004 Fairly ridiculous movie starring a fat and grumpy Clark Gable arguing with Sophia Loren over the custody of an adorable little Italian boy. If it teaches us one thing, it’s how much Italians hate the rich Americanos.

Joan of Arc (1948) Julie Gephart   Basic cable   10 June 2003 Choose the best answer: This movie taught us that... a) the only sure way to win a war is to stop your soldiers from playing with dice, or b) men will follow Ingrid Bergman anywhere.

Jumanji Julie Gephart   Basic cable   13 August 2003 TiVo thought it was recording another movie, and by the time I realized what this was, it was too late - I had already been sucked in by precious little Kirsten Dunst in her little braids and overalls. And speaking of sucking, the movie... well, I'll try to be charitable and just say it was made for kids.

Jurassic Park Julie Gephart   Basic cable   22 May 2004 Out of the whole cast, couldn’t they give me even ONE attractive person to look at? When they couldn’t even swing cute kids, I knew this was not the movie for me. Hilarious geek moment: When the little “I prefer the term ‘hacker’” girl runs up to a computer displaying a 3D map of the park and declares, “This is a UNIX system! I know this!” Yes, she executes that classic UNIX maneuver of pointing to the right building on the map and clicking on it. Good thing she was along, because you never know how long it could have taken those other bone heads to figure it out. “Well, this… looks… like the park… but everything is so… small… Do we have to… shrink?... to get in there?”

Le Divorce A Bennett   Hollywood Video DVD   22 February 2004 Muddled Merchant/Ivory production. Never decides on a main character or plot. The only lasting conclusion I could take from it is; "never divorce in France", coupled with "Kate Hudson is preternaturally thin".

Left Behind Mike Gadd   dvd at home   07 June 2003 You would think that all the money the writers of this series have made that they could have thrown a little at the movie production studio. The actors seem to be trying hard, but after buying the cameras theres nothing in the budget for special effects (claymation can't be that expensive, can it?). Like the book series though, I imagine we'll stay with the movie sequels just to see how close they stay to the story.

Lost in Translation Tony Pisarenkov   AMC Courthouse, Arlington, VA   04 October 2003 Bill Murray carried it, but there wasn't much to carry. Scarlett Johansson, too, was surprisingly impressive, sharing the screen with a presense like Murray at the ripe old age of 19, but that's where the positive qualities end. The characters, especially Murray's, are undercooked, the life crisis theme could have been developed with much more subtlety and creativity, the jokes about Japan bordered on insensitive, and even the potential for great visuals was wasted more often than not.

Love Rules! A Bennett   TiVo'd from ABC Family Channel   12 June 2004 Joey Lawrence may be better than this film. His female co-star definitely wasn't.

Millenium Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   24 March 2003 Classic! When my dad is in town, that means we have to watch a movie starring a former Charlie's Angel. This gem has Cheryl Ladd as a time traveler from a thousand years in the future who comes back in time to prevent Kris Kristofferson from discovering some technology she left behind during a mission. The best part is that, when she has screwed something up in the past, the result is a "time quake" in the future, wherein the camera shakes around a little. "Time Quake!" everyone yells, as they hang on to something.

Monkey Business (1952) A Bennett   TiVo'd from AMC   08 July 2003 Not particularly enjoyable. I hesitate to criticize Cary Grant, Charles Coburn and Ginger Rogers, but there you go. Some oldies take a youth elixir--it ain't quite Cocoon, but it does have (for those who enjoy such things) Marilyn Monroe, whose hiring her boss (Coburn) defends, stating, "anybody can type". Also, everything Meg Ryan has ever done is just a cut-rate Ginger Rogers rip-off. Why hasn't anyone else noticed? Not that I begrudge her for stealing from a true artist.

Mr and Mrs Smith Steven Krise   My Basement   06 August 2006 I rated this as highly as I did based solely on the number of scenes containing the suggestion of Angelina Jolie's tits...yeah, and that Brad Pitt is a dreamy fellow.

Mrs. Parker and the Vicious Circle Julie Gephart   Basic cable   28 May 2003 Yes, it was another one of THOSE movies. You know, the kind where you go in thinking, "This was an interesting woman. I could stand to know more about her." And then two and a half hours later, you are so depressed that you can barely muster the will to stand up? Yeah, one of those. Perhaps someday Kristin can write me a treatise entitled "Why some people actually enjoy depressing movies," because I just don't get it.

Not Another Teen Movie Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   19 March 2003 This was a really stupid movie with a couple of funny moments and what I considered to be a shocking amount of nudity. Does this mean I've become an Old Prude already?

Praying Mantis Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   14 January 2003 Unintentionally hilarious 1991 movie starring Jane Seymour In Bad Wigs. BadWigJane lures men into marriage and then kills them on their wedding night because she has daddy issues or something. The best part was when Dr. Quinn costar Chad Allen demonstrated that apparently his cuteness alone was enough to allow him to shrug off the poison that had killed so many others, or at least that's the most plausible explanation I could come up with. You never see Chad Allen around anymore, and more's the pity, I say.

Ravager Julie Gephart   Basic cable   27 July 2003 I wondered how there could be a movie starring Yancy Butler and Juliet Landau that I had never heard of, and now I know the answer. Some things should really remain buried. Note to movie producers: if you’re going to make a movie wherein you have approximately $12 to spend on “special effects,” it would be preferable just to skip those scenes and instead hold up hand-lettered cards in front of the camera saying things like “Now the shuttle makes a crash landing.”

Romeo Is Bleeding A Bennett   VHS Home Video   19 October 2002 What this movie wants to be I'm unsure, what it is I am also unsure. Gary Oldman, however, does an excellent job convincing me he is not British (take some notes, Christian Bale!). But Lena Olin looks better on Alias. And she was really the only reason I rented it in the first place.

Shanghai Noon Ray Hunley   Netflix DVD   01 May 2005 Puerile script and weak plot involving Jackie Chan and Owen wilson rescuing "princess" Lucy Liu in the late 19th century American West. Wilson and Chan are great at what they do, so I'll probably watch the sequel, but I'm not expecting much.

Snow Day, Bloody Snow Day Tony Pisarenkov   The Nevermore Film Festival, Durham, NC   19 February 2006 Everyone should have the right to make a joke.

Star Trek III: The Search for Spock Julie Gephart   Basic cable   13 June 2004 I watched this right after the BET Top 10 video countdown so that I could transition directly from one strange new world to another. As luck would have it, the future appears to contain far more Klingons and far fewer undulating bikini girls who answer to insulting terms. I suppose it's a fair enough trade, all things considered.

Strange Brew Tony Pisarenkov   VHS at home   03 February 2007 Amazing what can turn up in the back of your closet when you're getting ready to move, eh?

The Crossing Guard Steve Gadd   DVD at home   20 October 2002 Jack Nicholson waits six years for his daughter's DWI killer to be released from jail so he can finally kill him. Unfortunately, he forgets to put bullets in his gun and blows his big chance. So he tells the guilt-ridden killer he will come back for him in three days. Implausible plot, unbelievable and undeveloped characters, and a corny finale broadcast in advance. Not even Jack can rescue this weak Sean Penn effort.

The Dreams of Sparrows Steve Gadd   DVD   25 July 2005 Apparently intending to show what life is really like there, a couple of Iraqis carried video cameras around Baghdad and Fallujah. Unfortunately, the result is a themeless, positionless collection of home videos. We see carefully diverse opinion pieces from taxi drivers, shopkeepers, the film crew, local artists, and (most embarassingly) inmates of an asylum. Some love Bush, some hate Bush, nothing more interesting or provocative than you can hear anywhere. From time to time we get a helicopter flyby or some car bomb aftermath, exactly the sort of TV news coverage the director decries at the outset. One of the producers was killed before the film was completed, this is the only war tragedy that registers with any feeling. Even the title is left unexplained. While it must be supremely difficult to film in Iraq, the famous advice of Robert Capa holds true: "If your pictures aren't good enough, you're not close enough."

The Farmer's Daughter (1947) A Bennett   TiVo'd from PBS   06 April 2003 Oh my good heavens. What wants to be a Frank Capra-like film about truth and goodness and America and our forefathers gets so incredibly *boring* by the second hour that you don't even care if "Katie" the Swedish-American maid of the Congressman gets elected--or gets the man. You just really, really want her to stop chirping her lines like the Swedish Chef. A lot. How is it possible Loretta Young received an Oscar for this film?

The Jackal Kristin Schrock   My Brother's Couch   23 December 2002 This movie basically features Bruce Willis in a number of wigs and mustaches in order to disguise the fact that he's Bruce Willis. And then there's Richard Gere's Irish Accent. Now, I have nothing against Richard Gere but there's no way you're going to convince me that he's Irish. I did like the Russian Woman, Valentina, who has a cool scar on her face and smokes in every scene--even though she's not evil--but, of course, she has to die. Oh, and Gary Hobson's mom plays the First Lady and Jack Black gets his arm shut off in a scene where my brother told me, "You probably want to look away" and I did, but then I looked back too soon and it was all gross and my brother said, "I would've told you when it was safe" because I have a good brother, even though he makes me watch really crappy movies.

The Left Hand of God Julie Gephart   Basic cable   18 November 2003 Humphrey Bogart poses as a priest in a small Chinese village to escape an evil warlord and ends up getting religion. In this movie, I learned that evil Chinese warlords are really jovial white men who can be persuaded to let you go over a game of dice, and also that “females are simple biological structures – their bodies pay very little attention to their minds.” That explains a lot, actually.

The Mayor of Casterbridge (2001) A Bennett   TiVo'd from A&E who cut out more than an hour   26 August 2003 Dude? Dude. Wait--dude? Yeah.

The Rocky Horror Picture Show Julie Gephart   DVD   18 October 2003 Now I’m not an expert at the child-rearing, but it did seem a little odd to me that people had their three year old daughter watching this with us. I guess It’s never too early to learn about orgies and disembowelment! This seems in theory like a movie I should enjoy, but for some reason I’ve just always really hated it.

The Sword and the Sorcerer Julie Gephart   Basic cable   09 August 2003 It turns out that picking a movie because you sort of remember enjoying a TV show with Lee Horsley a long time ago is not always the best strategy. In this movie, Lee was crucified with nails through his hands, and then he pulled the nails out and proceeded to use those same hands to wield a giant sword with no apparent injury at all – magic! Or really bad editing. In the requisite scene with the girl and the giant snake, we got not one but two separate lingering close-ups of the snake writhing between her thighs, which we all know is the mark of a truly artistic director. “Dear Mr. Director, Your work with subtle and nuanced visual metaphor is outstanding, but don’t you think you ought to make your images just a touch more accessible to the common viewer? Also, I was thinking that if the woman could just make a SEVENTH jibe about some man’s sword being too small to serve her, then maybe I’d be able to put my finger on the veiled meaning she was attempting to convey. Your biggest fan, I. Hate You”

The Thrill of It All (1963) A Bennett   TiVo'd from AMC   22 May 2003 James Garner hates his wife, Doris Day. Sure, his jealousy, insecurity and misogyny are hidden under the very thin surface of this 60s-era comedy. It turns the stomach nonetheless to watch him attempt to convince her he's having an affair, has a drinking problem, and even--great Jehosephat--impregnate her as part of a wickeder-than-the-writers-want-us-to-believe scheme to get her to give up working outside the home and go back to being his on-call housefrau. Also includes a baby delivered in New York City traffic to a woman who neither sweats, nor cries out, nor removes her mink coat.

We're Not Married Julie Gephart   Basic cable   06 March 2004 Old comedy was less than satisfying since it divided its short time into six separate stories. A judge begins marrying couples before his appointment is official, so two years later, six couples find out that their marriages were not actually legal. Many are quite pleased with this development, as at least one couple actively loathes each other by now. Nevertheless, we somehow consider it a Happy Ending when they all get remarried again at the end.

You're Never Too Young Julie Gephart   Basic cable   17 July 2004 No matter how many Jerry Lewis impersonations I’d seen, I was still unprepared for how aggressively irritating the real thing could be.