Baghead A handheld camera held by nobodies; a fat guy likes a girl who is way out of his league (but then there is a guy with a bag on his head). Shot on location in the margins of the actors’ diary (but with a guy with a bag on his head). F The Take A handheld camera jitters along a desaturated palette populated by the almost stars of yesteryear; another Training Day/Collateral/Lakeview Terrace entry in the burgeoning genre of Verisimilar Male (On Male) Dom/Sub Fantasy. Q: Is Vangelis... Read Full Story

Finally, a new entry in the flagging ‘Commodified Misanthropy’ genre– a niche that, once dominant in the world of Independent-insofar-as-it-is-made-by-a-smaller-studio-that-is-owned-by-a-larger-studio-that-is-owned-by-one-of-the-five-companies-that-owns-the-entirety-of-everything Cinema, has fallen on hard times since the mid-to-late-nineties when Aaron Sorkin and Paul Simms reconstituted a pure strain of ‘Screwball Quirk Utopia’ (first discovered by Ernst Lubitsch in the 1930s) and everybody... Read Full Story

Speed Racer Five-word Synopsis: Lisa Frank Presents: F-Zero POINT Jim: Movies like this beg for producers to realize the artistic strengths and limitations of different media. As a movie, who the fuck cares about Emile Hirsch triumphing over I-Couldn’t-Afford-Tim-Curry? Even if the race scenes weren’t airbrushed by South Beach t-shirt shops, they’d still wear out their welcome by the second or third time you saw them in an ad or trailer. But, if these were camped up just one notch, and... Read Full Story

Brideshead Revisited Jim, In The Tissue-thin Guise Of A British Dandy That Is Quickly Cast (Half-)Aside In Favour Of Setting New Lows For This, Or Any Other, Website: I remember my summers in Victorian(?) England– peeking at napeskin, flirting with homosexuality, realizing that watching my social betters bicker in fancy clothes is bankable for a modest return no matter how many times it’s >>>>revisited<<<<. Oh! if only Frasier was still(eth) a show. Also, this should be the title for a... Read Full Story

Law of Attraction: The Science of Attracting More of What You Want and Less of What You Don’t Amazon User Review: “Out of all the books, tapes, and resources that I’ve purchased on the topic of ‘creating your ideal life’, Michael Losier’s ‘Law of Attraction’ is the absolute best ‘nuts-and-bolts’ treatment I’ve ever read. Period.” Based on the amount of phrases in quotations the above reviewer used, he’s either being incredibly sarcastic, or he’s trying to sell me drugs. The third... Read Full Story

If you’re like me, and you are constantly in line at the pharmacy trying to cash in index cards with “500 Percocets, please” written on them, then you know that the pill line is, impossibly, even stupider and more depressing than the rest of the store. During my average seven hours per day waiting in the world’s slowest line, I have a lot of time to kill. I spend most of the time staring dead-eyed at the endless rows of books targeted specifically at the elderly and the heavily-medicated... Read Full Story

Five-word synopsis: This is Madonna-level desperation. Point Jim: So, Jenna Jameson is embarrassed by her porn career, and now thinks that its preferable to be a 40 year-old ‘Plastic Surgery Nightmare’ version of Paris Hilton? Anyways, this is utter shit. F- Counterpoint Alex: There are two natural reactions to learning that a movie named “Zombie Strippers” is being made” excitement and disgust. And the order in which those emotions hit you say what kind of person you are. To wit: If you... Read Full Story

Point Jim: Until the police twist this seemed like just another ‘ooh… the suburbs’ movie, in which general distaste for the pursuit of material security, a subcultural narrative in which aestheticized poverty is a virtue, and an irrational, disproportionate, and hilariously self-excepting fear of mediocrity supplants actual satiric insight as the deriding of Them justifies the validation of a nebulous Us– we who go to unpopular museums and small galleries, we who go to shows not concerts... Read Full Story

Five-Word Synopsis: Cage attempts legitimacy, world weeps. Point Jim: The only way this could be even remotely redeemable is if it is actually, secretly a snuff film and Nicholas Cage is killed in the end. No hyperbole- I want him to be dead. J/K! Death is too good for him. F- Counterpoint Alex: I must disagree. Nicolas Cage is in some of the most amazing movies ever- not amazing in the “good” sense, but in the sense that watching them is a spiritual experience. Vampire’s Kiss is a... Read Full Story

Five-word synopsis: Good only from certain angles. So t- wait a second, William Defoe goes by “Willem” Defoe? When did that happen? Is he re-inventing himself as a hapless Dutch boy? Well, whatever his name is, he’s in this movie. Anamorphic paintings are pretty damn cool, I’ll give you that. But I wish people would stop making horror movies just because they found something neat on Wikipedia. “Wow, the Caspian War was a real hum-dinger! I know, we shall make a murder-mystery, and all the... Read Full Story