This was one of my favorite films as a kid, but I haven't seen it or even thought about it in a long time. My wife and son picked it out as a Christmas gift and we all watched it together. As an 80's kid's flick, I figured it wouldn't hold up that well, but it actually does. The effects are a little lame in places, but I've seen worse from modern films. And the story is good enough to drag you in no matter what your age.

As I was watching Navigator, it started coming back to me. I remembered being fascinated by young David falling into a ravine and waking up nine-years later. When he finds his parents they look much older and his younger brother is now older than him; it's a sweet reunion, as they've long thought him dead. A very intriguing way to bring you into this fantasy.

Soon NASA is after him because he can do new amazing things with his brain, which they think is connected to this UFO they recently found. Which of course it is. David sneaks aboard and is told he is the navigator of this other-worldly vessel. At first he's rightly scared, but before long he's cruising around the world at tremendous speed. This section is the highlight of the film, I think that any kid would love to imagine themselves at the control of this ship. There are some cool looking, muppety aliens, and David befriends one of the cute little ones.

With the help of his younger-older brother, Jeff; played by 80's kid film staple Matt Adler, who I was desperately trying to place what other films I'd seen him in the whole time (White Water Summer, Teen Wolf, North Shore, among others);
David is trying to get home to his family, but realizes that he'll never be left alone by the poke-its-nose-into-everything government. The movie ends in a satisfying Disney type way, where you're a little skeptical about the plausibility, but ultimately happy how everything turned out.

I think that kids of today can still enjoy the Flight of the Navigator and it's well enough made that parents will like it too. Joey Cramer is cute in the lead role of David, he's not asked to emote too much, but the scenes he has too, he's fine in. Paul "Pee-wee Herman" Ruebens plays the voice of the ship, he uses a lot of his trademark laugh and basically sounds like Pee-wee for most of the film. I can see it annoying a lot of folks and it did keep pulling me out of the film. In the trailer below, you can hear another voice used, it makes the film sound more serious. I'm guessing they changed it, so kids wouldn't be scared by the ship.

Most likely you've probably already seen this film, but if you haven't do yourself a favor and check it out, whether you have kids or not.

I was slightly intrigued by the trailer for this film. It looked fairly original, at least it wasn't a sequel, remake, or adaptation; which is fairly rare for a genre picture these days. David S. Goyer directing it also made me want to see it; even though he's responsible for the abomination that was Blade: Trinity, by far the worst of the series. But he's written some good sci-fi/action films in the last few years; Batman Begins, the first two Blade's and one of my all-time-favorite films Dark City.

Nick, played decently by Justin Chatwin, seems to have the world by the balls; he's very smart, good-looking, and well liked. But he's got a chip on his shoulder, his father's dead and his mother is ultra-controlling. He has a plan to get away from it all. He's been accepted into an art college in London and is planning on leaving the country without telling his mother. But before he gets the chance to leave, he pisses off the wrong person.

And this was my main problem with the film; the reason I could never buy into it. The person he angers enough to beat him almost to death, leaving him stuck in this state-of-limbo, which is the premise of the film; is this cute 90 lb. girl. Sure they stick her in a skull cap, dark clothing, and a pissed-off demeanor for the whole film, but I could never buy her as this ultimate-badass; she's a leader of a gang of thugs, she bullies everyone around her, she out-runs the police, and so on. It was like all these films where they stick the beautiful girl in glasses and all expect us to see her as the dork, only we're supposed to believe she's this total hard-case.

I appreciate that they were trying something different with this film. I can't remember seeing a film, where the lead character tries to figure out the mystery of his own disappearance. That's what made me want to see the film in the first place, but ultimately it wasn't that well executed and not all that interesting. At first it's sort of interesting to see Nick, walking unseen among the living, trying to figure out a way to get people to find his body. But it gets old after a while, the plot seems stuck in place for too long. That mixed with the phony-bad-ass-girl, made for an under-inspiring film.

I can see how this film might have its fans. It is different and fairly well made; an audience is out there for it. I think it's aimed at a teen audience, and who knows, I may have loved it then, maybe it would have made me feel smart for "figuring it out". But now I can't recommend it.

I'm not really a fan of musicals; I'll usually watch the Hollywood versions because I watch everything, but it's hard for me to connect with them. I don't really enjoy characters breaking into song and a choreographed dance for no particular reason. But when they're really well done, I tend to have some fun.

I really didn't know anything about Sweeney Todd; embarrassingly enough, my first exposure to it, was in Kevin Smith's Jersey Girl. But from that point, I was looking forward to the eventual Hollywood version. Usually they're happy and light, I wanted to see something dark.

For the making of this film, you really couldn't ask for a more perfect duo of Tim Burton and Johnny Depp. Burton revels in the dark-side of life and gives the ugliness a unique beauty. And who else could play a homicidal-barber and make him lovable but Depp? He doesn't have a beautiful singing voice, but he gives it a rough-quality, with a smidgen of playfulness.

It was a shock how much singing there is in this film. In most musicals you can count on at least a few minutes between songs, but here they're pretty much back-to-back, non-stop throughout the film. Some of them are darkly-wonderful, mostly those done by Sweeney Todd and his partner Mrs. Lovett. But when the kids sang, I lost a lot of interest. There was a particularly horrible ditty in an annoy ing squeaky voice by Sweeney's daughter Johanna, that I could have done without. And it was creepy how much this actress looks like a young Christina Ricci. (Find another type of girl Tim!)

I guess the young couple was somehow necessary, because they offer the only glimpse of hope in this deeply dark story, but I could have done without them. Sweeney plotting his revenge against Judge Turpin, played deliciously by Alan Rickman, who stole his family and wrongly imprisoned him was the meat of the film. I loved how Sweeney is so angry with the world, that he'll slash anyone's throat unfortunate enough to sit in his barber chair. And it got even more disgustingly beautiful, when he and Mrs. Lovett turn all that extra flesh into the most coveted meat pies in all of London.

Sweeney Todd is exquisitely photographed, I loved the use of the near black and white photography, violently shocked with the reddest of blood-reds, literally spraying everywhere. I don't know if I've ever seen more blood spilled, and I loved every drop. The sets of 19th Century London, had that unique Burton-esque quality. Johnny Depp revels in his role of Sweeney Todd; I really can't imagine another actor in this part. Minus a few lame bits, this is my new favorite musical, and the best Burton film since Ed Wood.

I read Phillip Pullman's His Dark Materials trilogy about seven years ago; they're incredible books, right up there with the other fantasy classics; Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia. So it was natural that they'd make a film series.

I was excited when they began production; but also a little nervous, I heard that they were cutting away the religious overtones; and director Chris Weitz didn't give me the greatest confidence. He's a good comedy director; American Pie and About a Boy are personal favorites, but he'd never done anything near this scale. When I saw the trailer, it looked like they had done pretty well with their adaptation.

For the most part, a film will never match the impact of the book. But here with The Golden Compass, I must say that they did an excellent job and created a rip-roaring adventure. Most of the characters were portrayed well, especially Lyra, her daemon Pantalaimon, and Iorek Byrnison the Ice-Bear. They couldn't quite get across how deep that connection between a human and their daemon is; but it was extremely cool to see everyone walking around with their own animal spirit. That was one of my favorite things in the book, it made me wish I had my own daemon. It'd probably be a platypus.

The special effects were top-notch, they did a beautiful job creating this fantastic world. All the amazing vistas, the cool boats and air-ships, the daemons, and I really loved the Ice-Bears. You could fully believe in the intense battle between Iorek and Ragnar; it was extremely cool to watch, with a very satisfying and bloody ending. I also really dug how they visualized Lyra seeing into the compass.

The characters all looked just right; Lyra was a bright-radiant girl, her uncle Lord Asriel played in a small role by Daniel Craig oozed confidence, and Nicole Kidman got the icy-beauty of Ms. Coulter perfectly.

I'm bummed that the film was kind of a flop at the box office, it's not looking good for the sequels. And the way this film ends, it's begging for more. I was looking forward to meeting Lyra's new best friend Will in The Subtle Knife and things get really nuts in The Amber Spyglass, where they take a trip into Hell and battle God himself at the end. I'm not sure how they're going to keep the religious overtones out of that? If it's made at all.

On the surface everything was just right with The Golden Compass; they told the majority of the adventure, got the major characters right, and most importantly made a good film. As time goes on, I think that more people will discover the film and that will be loved by many. But to really appreciate the story, you have to read the books, to fully understand the connection between everything and everyone in this world. I think I'll revisit them very soon.

Poor Philip K. Dick, between Next and Paycheck; Hollywood owes him a million apologies. Both of these films should have his name forcibly removed. There's no way they can credit these sci-fi abortions to the genius of his mind. Of course there's been some good films based on his books as well; Blade Runner being the best, and Minority Report and Total Recall being worthy as well. But you won't find anything near the quality of those films here.

Next is exactly the kind of film I hate most. They get good actors like Nicolas Cage and Julianne Moore, but the script is so horrible, they don't bother to do any sort of emoting beyond remembering their dialogue. It's an obvious paycheck movie for both of them. (You could say that Cage has done that for his last 10 or so.) They have a 100 million dollar budget, but the effects are terrible. The direction is lazy; there's no spark to be found anywhere in this film. It doesn't know what kind of film it wants to be; cheesy fun or serious action film, it just sags uselessly somewhere in between.

Cage plays Cage, this time with long greasy hair and the ability to see a few seconds into the future. Julianne is a FBI agent, who is desperately trying to find him, so he can help her stop a nuclear attack. Why she's wasting so much time and man-power trying to find this guy, instead of the actual terrorists never makes a lick of sense. He can only see a few seconds into the future, it's not like he's all knowing; his skill wouldn't come in handy, except for a lame scapegoat of an excuse thrown in by the 12th screenwriter at the last second.

There's a neat bit at the beginning of the film, where Cage escapes a Vegas casino, by using his gift to avoid the cameras and security-guards after him, by ducking behind people and slot-machines at just the right second. It's the only half-way inspired scene in the whole film. Then there's this whole contrived love story between him and Jessica Biel, who offers nothing here beyond something pretty to look at. I never bought into the FBI tracking him, that wastes a good portion of the film. The nuclear attack happens near the very end of the film, and is taken care of very shoddily.

Next is the perfect example of a soulless Hollywood production. It doesn't seem like anybody put any effort into this. Usually the effects for these big budget films are at least fun to watch, but here they're really terrible, they look like they were done 15 years ago. Cage keeps escaping everything; trains, cars, bullets, logs, at the last possible second and there's not an ounce of tension built because it all looks so cartoony.

I'm mostly disappointed in where Nicolas Cage has taken his career. Does he really need more money? He used to be one of my favorite actors, making brave choices, really throwing himself into every role. But since The Rock, he plays the same guy in every film and does these really worthless action flicks over and over. He's had a few brief departures in The Weatherman and World Trade Center, but if I have to watch him escape another digital-fireball, I think I'll puke.

My kid laughed hysterically at the trailer for this, and I thought it didn't look too painful, so we decided to check it out. At least it had Jason Lee as Underdog, he's been one of my favorite actors since Mallrats. I never watched the cartoon as a youth, it was before my time, and way before the target audience's, so I didn't have any connection to the character yet.

It was over quickly and it honestly wasn't that bad.Granted, I was watching it with my three-year-old, who laughs if you say the word poop. But I thought it was some decent, mindless fun. Underdog, starts out as a mild-mannered beagle, who works as a drug sniffing dog. When his schnoz is revealed as faulty he is let go. The great Peter Dinklage, who has a blast playing it an 11 here, is Dr. Barsinister; he kidnaps the jobless beagle and tries to do some nasty experimentation on him. Chemicals get sprayed, computers explode and Underdog escapes; instead of dying a nasty death from getting who knows what spilled on him, he gains superpowers. Isn't that always the case?

Soon he's taken in by the lame Jim Belushi and given to his son as a replacement for his dead mother, or something like that. The boy soon learns that his dog can talk, and that he can do other neat tricks, like fly faster than the speed of sound. He urges him to become a superhero and the rest is history. He goes around saving people for a while. Then Barsinsister figures out that he's the dog that escaped and it all comes to a big happy crashing conclusion at the end, with the dog saving the day and the bad guys going to jail.

No twists, no turns, nothing new to be seen here. But what do you want, it's a kids movie? The special-effects are fun, this is the most believable talking and flying dog I've ever seen. Jason Lee has some good one-liners as Underdog. Peter Dinklage and Partick Warburton have fun hamming it up as the villains. They keep Jim Belushi safely hidden for much of the film. And the whole thing is put together fairly well.

It's no new classic and I probably won't bother buying the DVD for my kid. But nobody got hurt, and not too many braincells died in the process. An okay way to waste 75 minutes of your life.

I don't even know what to say about this film. We've all seen it a thousand times. We know all the lines. It's the perfect holiday film, and we all watch it every year. At least everyone I know does. At least I thought they did; I was blown away when my dad and uncle both confessed to have never seeing it, when I popped it in after Christmas dinner. Huh? How is that even possible, it's on about 1000 times between Thanksgiving and Christmas every year.

Needless to say that they enjoyed it. So did the five kids sitting on the couch with us. Every moment of the film is its own little piece of perfection. The scene where Flick sticks his tongue to the pole. The scene where Ralphie beats up Scut Farcus. The scene where the old man gets his leg lamp. The "oh fudge" scene. The scene when Ralphie finally gets his BB Gun. And on and on.

The perfect tone of realism and comedy is set through the whole thing. I love the 1940's setting, when Americana was at it's peak. Each character is fully realized, from Ralphie, Randy, the parents, his friends and so on. Oh sure, I may be a little jaded having seen it near 100 times. I remember every line, every movement of the camera, every cut in the film. But to me that speaks to how well it holds up after so much scrutiny.

Some may say that It's a Wonderful Life is the all-time-best Christmas movie; but I'll always believe that this A Christmas Story is THE Christmas movie.

Gremlins is one of the seminal films of my youth. I still remember my mom talking to another mom about how horrible it was, and that the kids should definitely not see it. That was it, I had to see it. I don't remember exactly when I got to see it, it was probably on HBO. I saw everything on HBO those days, before video rentals were the norm.

I don't remember it scaring me. I think that even at a young age, I got that it was a comedy. Maybe a few of the scenes scared me, I briefly remember being tense during the final showdown between Zach and Stripe in the department store, but that's it. Since then, I've seen the film around 20 times. But it's been almost 10 since my last viewing. I decided since my cousin was probably old enough to view it, I'd bring it down to watch with him as one of our Christmas movies.

We've all seen the film, (If you haven't what are you doing here? Watch it now!) I don't need to recycle the plot of cute little Gizmo being bought as a pet, and him hatching a whole gaggle of horrible Gremlins that take over a small town during Christmas. I'm surprised by how well the film holds up. I think it has to do with the use of puppets for the Gremlins. They look very realistic, their movements are very well done, and acting with those creepy looking things probably helped the actors believe the situation. They're not winking at the camera, they play it very straight, so one minute it's a little creepy, the next you're laughing. A tough mix to pull off.

This was advertised as a Spielberg family film when it came out in 1984. But the violence, probably the kitchen scene where the mom dispatches of a few Gremlins in nasty ways in particular, this and another Spielberg creation, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, lead to the creation of the PG-13 rating. Spielberg produced a lot of these edgy kids flicks in the 80's, he's gone on to say that he wouldn't do so now that he has kids, I guess he didn't realize how scary some of them were. But I loved those films, I hate how white-washed most kids films are these days, most kids love being scared and they don't like being talked down to.

However, my 12-year-old cousin didn't seem to impressed with it; so maybe it doesn't hold up as well as I thought. But I still really enjoyed it. It's darkly hilarious, really well directed by Joe Dante, and full of great 80's actors, like Phoebe Cates, Zach Galligan, Corey Feldman, and Judge Reinhold. It'll remain a Christmas staple in my life and in a few years, I'll probably introduce it to my son.

My aunt got out an old VHS tape of The Snowman for the kids to watch a few nights before Christmas. (Yes, I'm very behind on my reviews.) Her jaw dropped when she heard I hadn't seen it. I'm not quite sure how I made it through my childhood without ever seeing this film. Adapted from a famous children's book of the same name, this television film came out in 1982, the peak of my childhood.

The story is basic but beautiful. One night a child brings the snowman he made to life and they share the wonders of the world together. The boy shows the snowman his home, and the snowman takes flight with the boy and they visit with all the other magical snowmen of the North Pole and Santa himself.

The film is beautifully animated, it looks just like a children's book. It's far simpler and much more magical, than most of the traditional children's Christmas shows. I'm sad that I missed it during my childhood, but I'll make sure to make it a tradition for my son.

View the entire film below.

I read Ender's Game over ten years ago. I loved it at the time, I felt like re-reading it. Something I don't do very often, there are so many books I want to read, and I don't have the time, so it shows how much I love a book when I take the time to read it again.

Ender's Game is the most famous novel by sci-fi author Orson Scott Card. Many years in the future, earth is over-populated, families are regulated to two children. Ender's a third child, his parents have been given permission by the government to have another, because both their first two were both geniuses, but not the kind they were looking for.

Earth was recently attacked by a race of aliens called the Buggers. The military is training children to fight a future war, and they're looking for the perfect commander. Ender passes their tests and is sent to live in a space-station where he is trained, along with other genius children, in battle strategies. Ender quickly becomes the greatest hope for the future of earth.

If you're a fan of sci-fi, you couldn't do much better than Ender's Game. It's a wonderfully thought out future. The only funny thing about it is Ender's siblings take over the world's government, using something called The Boards, which is basically the internet, but far behind what we enjoy these days. When I originally read it, I was just learning about the online world, and thought he had a brilliant picture of its future.

The ending is classic and is something I don't want to give away to anyone who hasn't read it before. It'd make a great twist-ending for a film, if they ever make one, which has been rumored off and on since I originally read the book. It'd be a tough movie to pull off, all the main characters are kids, but they do horribly adult things to each-other. Plus everything is seen through Ender's eyes and you'd lose that perspective. But there's a good movie in there, with the right adaptation.

I'm always looking for new movies to watch with my son. I don't want to watch the same movies over and over. I must have seen Cars about 50 times already. So when I found the Tarzan DVD on sale, and we had a long car ride down to the relatives for Christmas, I figured it was a good time to check out something new. I actually saw this in the theater when it came out in 1999, and remembered liking it for the most part, but I haven't seen it since.

Watching this reminded me how much I miss Disney's traditional hand-drawn films. There's a beauty that can't be captured by computer. It's very sad to think that it's gone forever. I hope that they decide to bring it back in the future.

Except for a couple of cheesy Phil Collins songs, and Rosie O'Donnell as an annoying comedy-sidekick, I think this is one of the better Disney films of the two decades. I read the Edgar Burroughs novel a few years ago, and from all the other Tarzan films I've seen, the core of this film is actually probably the truest to the original story. Thanks to animation, Tarzan moves like a gorilla, something the live-action films could never capture. His home life and love for the gorillas is much closer to the book.

Sure they go way off the track with some musical numbers and the over-the-top-action scenes, but at Tarzan's core, they kept it very close, and I appreciated that. The animation is gorgeous, the artists got the lushness of the jungle right; it doesn't look like a Hollywood back-lot full of ferns. Tarzan's battles with the jaguar and his escape with Jane from a group of monkeys are very exciting and well staged. Tony Goldwin does a good job of voicing Tarzan. And Minnie Driver has fun with the role of Jane.

My son had a good time with the movie, and he's already watched it again since this screening. It's not going to replace Cars, but it's a good alternative.

They advertised BUG as a horror film, and it has some horrific elements to it, but it's really a love story, an extremely twisted one, but a love story none-the-less. The film is based on a stage-play, and I didn't realize that until I started to watch the DVD extras. Usually when they develop a film from a play, it's fairly obvious to me, because in many ways they still feel like a play. And I should have got it here, but I was too involved in the story and director William Friedkin makes it so cinematic, that I didn't notice.

Except for the opening helicopter shot of the desert and a few minutes in a bar, the entire film takes place in one hotel room. Friedkin does such a wonderful job of shooting from every conceivable angle, that you never get sick of the room. Plus the actors do such a good job, and the film is cut so tight, that you also forget that most of the film is a dialogue between two people. A few other characters pop in, including surprisingly nasty Harry Connick Jr. as Ashley's bastard of an ex-husband.

There were a few moments, where Ashley Judd is overacting, when things are at their worst, that pulled me out of the story a bit, but for the most part she's dead-on as the very sad and lonely Agnes. And this is the role that Michael Shannon was born to play, he's usually a character actor, specializing in creepy roles, but he's perfect here in the role of Peter. Right from the start you can tell there's something off about Peter, but Agnes is so desperate for love and attention, that she looks past it, because he's truly enamored with her.

Things really start to go nuts when Peter believes he sees a bug in bed after they've had sex for the first time. Agnes doesn't see it at first, but Peter is forceful enough, that she starts to believe him. Then the bugs begin to multiply. Until they've taken over the entire room and their bodies. The couple goes to great measures to get rid of them, but the problem gets worse and worse, until teeth are getting pulled and people are getting killed. But even at their craziest moments, Peter and Agnes are deeply in love.

BUG is a sick and twisted love story, this film isn't for the squeamish. Brilliantly acted, for the most part, and and a great return to form for Friedkin. His best film since To Live and Die in L.A.. I think it's really freeing for these old Hollywood vets to get down and dirty with an independent flick.

This DVD caught my eye on the shelf at Blockbuster and I immediately rented it. I'm a sucker for this kind of poster, the hipper-than-though design; you know for films like Juno, Little Miss Sunshine, Napoleon Dynamite and the like. Even though there's been a glut of these kind of films in the last few years, I haven't grown tired of them yet. Most of them have been pretty good, Thumbsucker and Running With Scissors being the only two I can remember not enjoying; I'm sure somebody's working on a spoof right now.

The Rage in Lake Placid turned out to be another good coming-of-age / everything-isn't-fine-in-the-suburbs type film; but it's not as "hip" as the advertising suggests. The film isn't chock full of hipster dialogue and funky, unrealistic set design. The filmmakers went for a much more natural feel; though that cool attitude bubbles right underneath, like they wanted to go all out, but were refraining themselves.

The film is about Placid Lake, that's a hippie-parent name, he's just graduated from high school; where he stood out as the weirdo. It was something he was well aware and proud of, really shoving his attitude down everyone's throats. It's particularly funny how he treats the school's bullies, literally asking them for the day's beating. When he makes a film that's shown in front of the whole school, about the atrocities that are perpetrated by the bullies, teachers and other students; he gets in big trouble, and is thrown from the roof of the school.

Waking up in the hospital, covered head-to-toe in a cast, he makes a new life decision. He wants to be normal. He gets a haircut, buys a new suit and lies his way into a job at an insurance agency. He's amazingly good at it, and genuinely wants the change to stick. His hippie parents don't approve, they want him to screw-around, to be an artist; following the societal norm equals death. Even his straight-as-an-arrow girlfriend begins to think he's going to far. He questions who he really is.

In his feature film acting debut, Ben Lee has a good charismatic screen-presence as Placid, his narration carries much of the film. I guess he usually fronts a rock band, and is the longtime boyfriend of Claire Danes, who makes an extremely brief cameo. Rose Byrne (Wicker Park) plays Placid's best friend Gemma, she's decent as the good-girl who discovers she wants to be bad, as soon as he turns normal. Miranda Richardson and Garry McDonald are both very funny as his parents.

This film also continues the trend of my enjoying Australian films, they have a really wonderful sense of humor in the Land Down-Under. Writer/Director Tony McNamara, while not knocking it out of the park with this film, proves that he's a talent to watch for.

I immediately fell in love with Futurama when it came out in 1999. I was already a huge fan of The Simpsons, and I knew that I had to give a chance to any other show created by Matt Groening. For the few years that Futurama was on, I actually thought it was funnier than those seasons of The Simpsons. Maybe because Groening was focusing his attention there?

I was bummed when they canceled the show, not devastated, I felt it had a good run and that it was starting to reach a lull towards the end. And The Simpsons was always there to fill that void. But I was happy to see that they were releasing a straight-to-DVD movie, it gave me a chance to catch up with Fry, Leela, Bender and the rest of the year 3000 gang.

Bender's Big Score is a slightly-above-mediocre 90 minute episode of Futurama. They always say that, but here it really couldn't be more true. Nothing has changed or improved, it's all the same, just longer. If you're a fan of the show, it's well worth seeing. But if you haven't seen Futurama before, I suggest you check out a few episodes on Cartoon Network or Comedy Central, or wherever it's showing these days.

In this episode, uh, movie, the gang and everyone else are scammed via email by a couple of goofy looking aliens into giving the entire world away, piece by piece. After taking over Global Express as their headquarters, aliens discover the secret to time travel tattooed on Fry's butt. They reprogram Bender and send him back in time to steal all the great treasures of the past. Meanwhile Leela falls in love with a mysterious stranger; Fry is so heartbroken that he sends himself home to the year 2000. Anyways, you get the drift... the plot is convoluted and basically just set-dressing for the writers to hang their non-stop jokes on.

Bender and the Professor remain my favorite characters, each hilarious in their own way. Being a huge fan of sci-fi, I've always loved the show for all the futuristic gadgets and scenarios they come up with. This is I believe is the first time they've used time-travel on the show, and they have fun with the paradoxes that come with it.

In the commentary, they mentioned that there are going to be three more Futurama movies. The next one is due out in March, 2008, but I'm not sure where that stands with the writer's strike. These animated films always go through 100 rewrites before they're finished. I noticed on IMDb that it has Homer himself, Dan Castellaneta, playing a character called Robot Devil. Too cool! Whenever the next Futurama episode, film, whatever, is released, I'll be sure to check it out.

I didn't know anything about Edith Piaf before watching this film; sure I'd heard a few of her classic songs, but I had no clue who the woman behind them was. It isn't the easiest film to sit through; it's French, nearly two-and-a-half-hours long, and an extremely depressing story. But I'm very glad to have seen it.

Even though it's long and sad, the film is consistently entertaining. Edith lived a very short, but extremely full life. While still very young, her father drops her off to live at a whorehouse, where she is taken in by a young prostitute who always wanted a child of her own. It's from her and her house-mates that Edith learns how to sing. Her father comes back a few years later and rips her from this home she's learned to love. He's a street performer and soon she's in on the act, using her young, but already wonderful voice to make money.

As a young lady she's still living off the money she makes singing on the streets. Before Gérard Depardieu's character notices her talents and has her sing in his club. From there she's given lessons on how to sing and perform properly, and in not much time she's a national sensation. She was one of the first Diva's. As soon as she has a little money and fame, she's horribly demanding of everyone around her.

What keeps the standard bio-pic storyline fresh; her rise-to-fame, drug use, fights and lovers; is the editing. The film is constantly jumping back and forth in her time-line, from her youth, till her untimely death; yet it is a cohesive and satisfying story.

But what really makes the film worthwhile is Marion Cotillard's powerhouse performance; rightfully nominated for an Oscar. She plays everything from her all-out craziness to her girlishly in love note perfect; she also does maybe the best lip-sync work ever. You really believe it's her belting out these songs; Edith's voice is so unique that they made the right choice in keeping it in the film.

La Vie En Rose is a beautiful and extremely well crafted film. Do yourself a favor and see it.

I'm a huge fan of end-of-the-world stories; I'm not quite sure why. Something to do with my sick pleasure of seeing the human race wiped out, and my fantasy being one of the last people alive. Of course I want nothing like that to ever happen, but it leads to me watching as many movies about it as I can.

So I was excited when the long delayed I Am Legend went into production. I've been following this project for almost ten years, since Arnold Schwarzenegger was rumored to star. I'm not a huge fan of Will Smith, I think he's good in comedies, I enjoyed both Men in Black films. But I think he personally ruined I, Robot with all his mugging for the camera. After last year's Pursuit of Happyness showed he could convincingly do a dramatic role, I was a little less skeptical. I was also stoked to see director Francis Lawrence's next project; I was one of the few people that truly enjoyed Constantine.

For the most part I really dug I Am Legend, it's one of the best end-of-the-world films yet. Will Smith as Robert Neville traveling through the empty canyons of New York, was one of the most iconic images of the year. I loved the way that nature was taking back the city, with grass growing out of every crack. I could have done without Neville chasing the extremely CG looking deer, then running into the even more CG looking Lions. Real life creatures are nearly impossible to convincingly create in a computer, we all know too well what they look like, but that's a minor complaint.

The creatures were much better designed, and actually scary in a few scenes. I think that make-up for the close-ups would have been a better way to go, and use the CG for the full-body and group shots only. Anyways... I thought the creatures were cool for the most part. I especially liked the scene where Neville chases his dog into an abandoned building, with only his gun light showing the way, it was a real tension builder. I loved how the creatures learn from Neville's actions, and use them against him.

Will Smith's performance was very good, he convincingly portrays the underlying insanity, until everything goes to far and he snaps. I heard some complaints about how he was acting weird; anybody that had witnessed all of humanity die, including his family, and had been living on his own for five years, surrounded by horrible monsters would be a little strange in the head. He could have taken it even further in my eyes, but he's a military-scientist, so he's maybe a little more equipped to handle it.

Overall I really loved the film; the sense of dread that filled the film, the downer, yet happy ending. The effects, except for the deer and lions, are top notch; I've never seen the end-of-humanity better portrayed. Will Smith carried the film very well. I think that Francis Lawrence proves that he's one of the better, big-budget sci-fi directors out there; he's got an great eye, a knack for mixing the normal and the incredible, and most importantly the ability to tell a story. This is a film I'll go back to revisit a few more times.

Maybe I'll check out Omega Man again before it's out on DVD.

I thought that the trailer for The Reaping made it look like a decent film. Plus the fact that Hillary Swank was in it, made me think that it might be a little-highbrow for a horror film. When the reviews came out, they were uniformly bad. So I went into this film with pretty low expectations, and they still weren't met.

It's not a horrible film, it's fairly well made for a horror film, that's due to the A-list Hollywood team involved; the effects are all very good, the photography is nice, the acting is all decent, the story is even somewhat original and unfolds in a satisfying way. All qualities that you usually don't find attached to a lot of horror films. So why did I not like it? That's question I'm asking myself as I'm writing this.

I guess it comes down to two things. The film never grabbed me; it never made me feel like I had to see what happened next, I felt bored through the whole thing. Second, there wasn't one instant where I felt the least bit scared. Even though I'm fairly jaded towards horror films, good ones can still get my heart-rate up, and this film never did. There was only one scene where I felt fully engaged, which was when the cicadas attacked; it was well executed and something that I had never seen before. It's no wonder it's highly used in the trailer, even though the scene only lasts around a minute.

Other than that the film is completely forgettable. The ten plagues are attacking a small Southern town, and the residents believe it's because of a little girl. Hillary Swank is a scientist sent in to investigate the reason it's happening; she's also a former priest, no, I'm sure that won't come into play. The twist at the end is completely Hollywood, it doesn't really enhance anything you've seen before that point.

This film might work for those who only watch Hollywood films, and don't bother with a lot of horror films, because like I said before, it's fairly well made. To well made to laugh at, so you can't enjoy it on that level either. Those looking for something new, artistic or truly engaging in any way, should avoid.

Kurt Vonnegut is one of my favorite writers, though honestly I've only read a few of his books. I can't say why, only that I go through books so slowly and there are so many books I want to read. When I heard about his death, I thought it was time I finally read what is considered his best book, Slaughterhouse-Five.

The book is about Billy Pilgrim, who has become "unstuck in time"; meaning that he unwillingly skips from one moment in his life to another. One minute he'll be in Germany as a prisoner-of-war, the next he'll be consoling his wife, and the next he'll be stuck on another planet with a movie star. The book also has a strong anti-war message; Vonnegut was a P.O.W. during the bombing of Dresden, which is one of the worst moments in human history; the book speaks about the aftermath in a horrifying way.

Even though Vonnegut tends to write about fantastic subjects, his characters ring true. I think that's what I love about his writing, is that he brings you into these strange worlds and makes you believe in them. His writing is also done in a casual conversational tone, where you feel like he's personally telling you a tale.

I saw the movie many years ago, don't really remember it all that well. But I'll try to revisit it soon.

The idea behind this film is wonderful; give twenty of the world's best directors free reign to make a short film about Paris and see what happens. Each director gets a section of the city to tell a love-story that takes place there. None of the films are connected in any way, there's no narrator, we simply move from tale to tale.

There are some really wonderful short films here. My favorite is a toss up between the Coen Brothers (no surprise) and Tom Tykwer. The Coen's tell the story of a slightly lost American in Paris, played by the always wonderful Steve Buscemi. He's minding his own business in the Paris Underground, when he catches the eye of a couple making out across the tracks. The boyfriend starts to yell derogatory things at him in French, which he can't understand, and before he knows it the girlfriend is sitting next to him, offering him a kiss. There's also a hilarious little bit about a boy who's shooting spit-balls at him.

Tom Tykwer's (Run Lola Run) is about a blind kid who falls in love with Natalie Portman. We see their entire relationship play out in a matter of minutes through a variety of still-shots, it's a beautifully shot and edited film. Alexander Payne's (Election, Sideways) was also a favorite, his is about a middle-age American woman, who has always wanted to visit Paris, and is now finally getting to and is falling in love with the city itself; told very much in his wonderful comic style.

There being twenty films, there was bound to be some mediocre and bad ones. Gérard Depardieu's turned out to be particularly boring, a French couple sitting around in a coffee shop talking. There was another one starring Bob Hoskins, I'm not sure of the director of the short, that I couldn't get into. But each film is only around five minutes and you're moving on to Gus Van Sant doing his thing, Wes Craven telling a weird little love story in a cemetery, and there's one tale that is way out there, Vincenzo Natali (Cube) has Elijah Wood falling in love with a vampire.

I'm a little biased, because Paris is my wife and I's favorite city in the world, so we just enjoyed seeing the beautiful photography of the entire city. But was also very cool to see all these director's one after another. You really get a sense for how much a director influences a film, as each short has it's own style, rhythm and pace. I can see going back and watching some of these shorts over and over, and never bothering with some others again. But overall Paris, je t'aime an incredible artistic experiment, I'd love to see another 20 directors get a stab at it.

This was on one of the movie channels, I'm a sucker for any 80's horror film, and I had never seen it before; that's my excuse for watching this lame piece of crap. It's been quite a while since I've seen the original Wes Craven film. I did enjoy both of the remakes, slightly better than most slasher films these days.

So in this one, a group of dirt-bikers are taking a bus through the desert on their way to a race. The cast of characters includes one of the girls, Ruby, from the first film. Why she didn't start screaming bloody-murder the minute they turned off the main road and started to head into the territory where her entire family was killed, I'll never know. That's the second I stopped caring about this flick, because I knew that there wasn't going to be an ounce of intelligence to the script.

Again the kids are left stranded in the middle of the desert, with killer mutants on the loose. They do the typical stupid horror movie thing of splitting up so they're more easily killed. There's even one line of dialogue in the film, where they talk about sticking together, then literally minutes later, they've split into four or five different groups, a lot of them going off on their own. One girl is so sweaty that she just has to take a shower, no that's not asking for a violent death.

None of the kills are original. A lot of them take the cheap-skate way out and cut away as soon somebody is about to get it. The lamest thing about the film, is that there are only two mutants. The Reaper and Pluto, both left over from the first one. At least they got Michael Berryman and his cult-movie-face in it.

Wes Craven took a paycheck, and vacation from his brain while making this sequel. It's a complete waste of time; watch the original or either of the remakes, if you have to see some desert-mutants kill somebody.

I've known about this film for quite a while, I read some good reviews for it when it premiered at the 2006 Toronto Film Festival. I've been wanting to see it since then, but it being a small New Zealand flick, it played nowhere near me. When it was released on DVD, our local Blockbuster only had two copies, so it took a few weeks for me to luck into getting it. Let me tell you, it was well worth the wait!

Horror-comedy is my favorite genre, it's also the toughest to pull of. You need the right amount of each for it to work well. Black Sheep gets that mix exactly right. It's incredibly gory, and fairly suspenseful and scary in a few sections, but it's also downright hilarious through the whole thing. I admit that my humor runs pretty dark, I was probably laughing at more than most would; like the way the characters land in a pile of human remains. But there are some brilliantly humorous scenes, that I believe almost anybody would find funny; at least those that would want to rent a flick like this.

My favorite comedy bit of the year is from this film. The characters are just discovering that the sheep have turned and they're escaping in their truck, a sheep attacks the guy who is driving and he's trying to keep the truck on the road, while also keeping this mutant sheep at bay, punching and kicking him in the head. Finally he bales out of the truck, right before it goes over the cliff and there's a quick shot of the sheep sitting up behind the wheel and his facial expression as he drives off the cliff is priceless.




The film starts with our hero being traumatized by his older brother, he kills the young boy's favorite sheep, and attacks him while wearing the sheep's bloody coat. Soon after they learn their dad's died. Cut to twenty years later and the young man now has a sheep phobia, he's on his way back to the family farm for the first time in many years, to sell his half to his older brother. Unbeknownst to him, his brother has been experimenting on the sheep, and of course that can only lead to one thing, killer, mutant sheep.

Meanwhile, a couple of tree-huggers have snuck onto the ranch to liberate some of these experiments. The guy gets bit by the nasty little thing, and starts to change into something worse than the sheep, a were-sheep! The girl escapes and runs into the hero and one of his old buddies, that's when the sheep-shit hits the fan. Stuck in the middle of their huge ranch, with no truck and no cell service, surrounded by thousands of mutating sheep, they must find a way to survive and warn everybody.



Right from the start, the filmmakers realized that the whole idea of killer sheep is so ridiculous that they set the film up to be a comedy. Even the characters within the film treat the idea as absurd, trying not to believe it, even while their lives are put at stake numerous times.

So while you're laughing at the situations, you also have to treat them somewhat seriously because the mutant sheep look so believable. Peter Jackson's Weta Workshop, did a wonderful job of building the sheep, through a combination of make-up and puppets, wisely keeping the digital effects to a minimum. I think that digital monsters still don't work, that when an actor has something to physically get into trouble with, it sells the fear far better.

Writer/Director Jonathan King is a fabulous new talent. He makes the crazy idea mutant sheep work and keeps the tone of the film just right throughout the entire film. He gets good performances out of his actors, when the film's premise and tone makes it tough. He's got a great eye for how to shoot a horror film. Everything in this film is far better made than you would ever think possible. If it weren't Shaun of the Dead, I'd call this the best horror-comedy of the decade; it's right there on the same level. Make sure to see this film!