HOME | BOOKS | MOVIES | GRID | SEARCH | NEWS
Browse Movies by Title
( 1 2 4 8 A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

A Knight's Tale Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   11 March 2003 Horses, fighting, dancing - what could be better? Only a movie featuring TV's Best Husband Wash and, as my boss insisted much to my amusement, "Lisa Bonet."

Bedazzled Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   21 January 2003 Can you even comprehend the stunning beauty that is Elizabeth Hurley? CAN YOU? I'm surprised Brendan Fraser could even stand in the same room with her for some of these scenes, much less manage to deliver any lines. I would recommend watching this movie without sound in order to spare yourself from the entirely stupid plot of geek-selling-soul-to-devil.

Better Than Chocolate Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   09 February 2003 Story of a young girl trying to manage the clash between her new artistic hippie lesbian subculture and her depressed, sexually repressed mom who moves in with her after a divorce. Also, it was a terrible, stupid movie.

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...?"

Blue Sky Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   15 February 2003 Has Jessica Lange ever done a movie where her character was not spiraling further and further out of control on a path of self-destruction? With some Jessica Lange, Tommy Lee Jones, and even a young Chris O'Donnell, you can't have an entirely unpleasant viewing experience.

Caddie Woodlawn Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   07 March 2003 A hundred times better than Pippi Longstocking, but I think from now on I had better stick with just reading the childhood classics. Jolly Uncle Edmond was transformed into a goofy boob played by Parker Stevenson, and good old Robert Ireton was reduced to nothing more than a rabid pit bull whose only character trait seemed to be that he really, really, really wanted to kill some Injuns.

Dude, Where's My Car Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   05 January 2003 Ok, it was bad. You know going into it that it's going to be bad, and yet it can still surprise you with how bad it is. That's a special movie. It still made me laugh here and there, because man, I just really kind of love that Big Dumb Ashton Kutcher.

Final Fantasy: The Spirits Within Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   13 March 2003 I was completely fascinated by the animation, and that took me a long way, but I hated the story. This movie was the closest thing to reading a science-fiction novel that I've seen, but mystical life forces are not really my thing. By the end, I was just clinging to the tenet "Blue=Good" in lieu of being able to follow the particulars. "Of course the earth's spirit is shooting a giant energy beam into space, because... heck, I don't know, but it's blue! Good beam! Blooo gooood! Happy triumph yay! Please let this be over soon."

Fools Rush In Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   22 February 2003 Another movie a la Greek Wedding in which Rich White Guy learns that he has absolutely no culture of his own and that everything from his background is Wrong and Bad. Since he is a good person, he recognizes this and abandons his lifestyle completely to immerse himself in the wholly Good if sometimes amusing culture of his wife. Now, I know Whitey is evil and repressive of other cultures; really, I do. But this is a marriage. Could there not be even one thing that he brings to the mix? One thing from his life - one hobby, one piece of music, one bit of food - that his wife enjoys and adopts for herself?

Get Over It Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   15 March 2003 Not the best teen comedy ever, but not the worst. Starring the very likable Ben Foster, who I've never seen in anything else, and the ubiquitous Kirsten Dunst. This movie featured some mangled Shakespeare, some singing, some dancing, some Carmen Electra dominatrix-being, and more than one performance by Sisqo.

Heavenly Creatures Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   14 February 2003 Wow. What a thoroughly... disturbing movie. Young teen girls in New Zealand live inside their own fantasy world and calmly plan a murder. Directed by champion of NZ Peter Jackson.

Introducing Dorothy Dandridge Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   25 March 2003 Halle Berry portrays the singer and actress who was the first black woman nominated for a Best Actress Academy Award. Naturally, she self-destructs, because otherwise she'd just be a regular old important actress, and who would bother to make a movie about that?

John Carpenter's Ghosts of Mars Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   08 April 2003 If you want to see thumbs sliced off, fingers sliced off, arms sliced off, legs sliced off, and Pam Grier's head on a stake, then this is the movie for you! It was a typical dumb action/horror movie, but I thought it was pretty fun. Had I known that it contained a bona fide Female Action Hero, I certainly would have watched it long ago, no matter how bad it was.

Kiss of the Dragon Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   25 January 2003 Jet Li is a cop from Beijing working to bust a dirty cop in Paris. I'm here to tell you that if you want to be a dirty cop, Paris is apparently your city - you can just open-fire into crowds, blow things up, beat up suspects in public, and the polite French public will simply ignore you.

Lara Croft: Tomb Raider Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   05 April 2003 I got my crashing disappointment out of the way when this movie was first released, so on the rewatch I was able to let the "plot" slide past and enjoy the fantastic sets and good action scenes. The bungee scene is one of the most inventive fights I've seen in a long time.

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.

Miss Congeniality Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   06 January 2003 More fun after we got out of bumbling cop-world and into pageant-world. There were typically lame and stilted moments like in every Big Comedy, but there were fun parts too. If I have to watch a comedy, I'm all for Sandra Bullock being in it.

New Adventures of Pippi Longstocking Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   01 February 2003 I really loved this book as a kid. The movie, however, sucked so much that I think it created a vortex in the corner of my living room.

Newsies Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   02 February 2003 I was thinking of an entirely different movie when I recorded this, and I certainly was not expecting nubile young dancing boys in a musical. Anyway, this truish story was about newspaper delivery boys who went on strike in old New York and started a mini-revolution in child labor industries.

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?

Planet of the Apes (2001) Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   01 January 2003 It gets two points exclusively for makeup, because this was a film I truly and actively hated from start to finish. I never saw the original, so I don't know how much of the horrendous plot and characterization was inherited and how much was new to this version. I may have shouted insults at the television more than once, all alone in my apartment.

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.

Queen of the Damned Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   12 March 2003 Based on my favorite of the Anne Rice vampire novels, although the movie glossed over the most interesting parts of the book. Still, I thought it was a really engaging movie... for exactly 52 minutes, at which time it all fell apart. Kudos for someone finally casting a good vampire, though; Lestat, unlike every Dracula I've ever seen, actually managed to look beautiful and alluring while still looking scary and otherworldly.

Robocop Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO leftover   01 May 2003 This genre classic contained some surprisingly good effects and some surprisingly bad ones. They seemed particularly proud of one makeup job where a man's skin melted after being dumped into toxic waste. I measure "pride" in "inordinate amount of screen time that it took for this character to die." For minutes on end, Melted Guy was moaning and waving his arms around and frightening other characters with the sheer quality of his makeup job. Just when you thought it was over, he pops up in yet another scene to receive his final death. RIP, Melted Guy.

Shadow of the Vampire Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   14 February 2003 Good times, good times. Brilliant silent film director makes a pact with an ancient vampire to star in his movie, and naturally things go wrong. Or maybe they go right. Who's to say?

Sirens Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   14 April 2003 This quirky little movie teaches us that sensuality is not inherently evil, at least not in Australia. Baby-faced Hugh Grant and his wife get stranded at the country estate of a controversial painter and his sometimes nude models. Lots of Australian wildlife was used in ways that I'm sure were very artistic and therefore completely beyond me.

Summer Catch Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   14 January 2003 These free movie channels are inducing me to watch more dreck than I ever thought possible. If I am forced to listen to horrible, stupid dialogue such as no actual person would ever utter, I would at least prefer that it come in the form of smug quips just before people start kicking the crap out of each other in a kung fu showdown. "Oh, how can I be worthy of your rich girl love, when I am but a poor sniveling lawn boy?" Bad answer: "But I love you too! Allow yourself to be glorious!" Good answer: "eeeEEEEEEYAH! Oh, I'M sorry - I guess you're finding it harder to whine now with that CRUSHED WINDPIPE, eh Freddie boy? Ha ha ha ha ha." Now that would have been a decent movie.

The 6th Day Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   08 March 2003 I love a good futuristic action movie, and I love Arnold Schwarzenegger no matter how old he gets. This movie was set in a near-future where cloning of humans was possible but banned under the "6th Day law" (from God creating man on the 6th day). They came down heavily on the side of cloning being evil, but they didn't do a very good job making their point since I was left going, "Cloning! Wow, that will be great!"

The Beastmaster Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   12 January 2003 Marc Singer is an ugly weasel of a man, but I'll give him props for a fine physique back in 1982. I really need someone to pre-watch movies for me and slap "Animal Death" warning stickers on them so I can at least prepare for the trauma. Oh, and Tanya Roberts? How on earth is she STILL working? Surely there must be some other giant-bosomed woman out there who can deliver lines like she's not in a high school play.

The Jungle Book (1994) Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   18 February 2003 Quite possibly the perfect little movie, except for the writing and possibly the acting. Despite these minor flaws, it was full of adorable cuddly animals (that didn't die!) and precious large-eyed children, one of whom grew up into an absolutely stunning man. Also there were many majestic close-ups of a tiger, and you can't go wrong with that in my book.

The Mexican Julie Gephart   Mysteriously Free HBO   28 January 2003 Could it be... a Brad Pitt movie that I actually liked? This must mean all the regular Brad Pitt fans hated it, because it was actually sort of fun.

The Virgin Suicides Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   05 January 2003 Five teenaged sisters commit suicide. This film starts out by telling you the ending, and eventually the ending comes, but nothing in the middle does anything to explain it. I didn't expect pat answers, but some occasional insight into the characters' states of mind would have been nice. Still, it kept me interested along the way, even if it didn't add up to a satisfying whole.

The Wedding Planner Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   14 March 2003 It's hardly worth writing a comment about a romantic comedy, since every single one of them is exactly the same with different actors.

Wes Craven's Dracula 2000 Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   18 February 2003 This took what could have been a very interesting story about the origins of Dracula ("Dra-COOL-ya") and made it completely overbearing and ridiculous by the end. Still, it's not every day you get to see killer leeches, so that's something.

While You Were Sleeping Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   21 February 2003 Always a good time. The epitome of what makes Sandra Bullock loveable.

Zoolander Julie Gephart   Mysteriously free HBO   23 February 2003 I don't want to fight Kristin or anything, but I also feel some serious love for Owen Wilson. I don't usually like comedies, but I liked this one.