kitsenugari

I recommend watching "JP3" during a night of heavy drinking, otherwise you'll keep asking too many questions, too many logical questions. This movie certainly won't be able to answer any of them for you. Except for maybe one: Yes, at least it's better than "The Lost World." Ooh, and maybe another one: "So this is what happens when you shoot a movie without a finished script."

If you knew that big, man-eating reptiles inhabited a certain spot in a certain place in the world, wouldn't you have the common sense to stay as far away from that place as possible? OK, well, neither did anyone in this movie, namely Eric Kirby (Trevor Morgan), who decides to go

PARASAILING within close proximity to Isla Sorna, the *other* island where genetically revived dinosaurs are running around. Eric is then inexplicably surprised when he's attacked by some big scary flying creatures and must make an emergency landing. His parents, Paul and Amanda (played by the always brilliant Bill H. Macy and the consistently irritating Tea Leoni), decide to go to Isla Sorna to rescue their son.

At least those two show some semblance of brain power and realize they'll need help, so under false pretenses they lure Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and one of his students, Billy (Alessandro Nivola), away from yet another under-funded dig in Montana, to help them in their search. The Kirby's also hire some extraneous folks from Rent-a-Mercenary.com, because the dinosaurs have to eat someone.

If you can sit through the boring first half hour of this movie you're golden. Once everyone gets to the island things start to heat up and at least there are some pretty-looking CG animals to keep you occupied. Another thing that may help ease the pain: leave your sense of logic at home. At no time did I ever believe the public at large would allow an island like this to exist, especially since there are dinosaurs living there that can FLY AWAY if they want to.

Anyway, back to the effects. Since that T-Rex is just *SO* '93, we now have a Spinosaurus, which resembles a giant duck. However, the Tyrannasaurus does end up making an appearance, during which it has a pretty intense fight with Dino-Mallard.

Also making another go at stardom are those super-brained Raptors, now enabled with the gift of squawk-speak (oh, right, that whole bird theory again). In addition, for those disappointed with their absence in the first movie, there are plenty of winged Pteranodons, a glimpse of what happens when good pelicans go bad. Actually, most of this movie *looks* good, that is if it relates to the dinosaurs. Industrial Light & Magic couldn't be bothered with the other effects, so they were probably done by "the new kid", who worked on them at home using his Macintosh G4 and a flatbed scanner.

The weak side of this movie (well, one of the weak sides) lies in the lack of real story: "Kid crashes on island, parents crash on island, parents try to find kid on island. Chaos ensues." Wasn't that kind of like the first two movies? Dr. Grant is too busy lecturing everyone on the evils of making giant ducks to leave any breath for constructive thinking, and Billy is too preoccupied with the "wow" factor that made the first "JP" so magical. The others in the group are just a little too dumb to do much of anything at all.

So the film rambles along its little road of action sequences followed by more action sequences (but they're at least good sequences), until it ends up running on vapors for the last 15 minutes. At this point, all the effects have outstayed their welcome, and we all just want to go home.

My grades for "Jurassic Park 3" (New grading system! So exciting!):

action: A- plot: C- acting: C special effects: B average overall grade: C+

I'll cut right to the chase: This movie was really stupid. No, worse than stupid, so far beyond stupid I can't even use real words to describe how stupid it was. It was Uberstupid.

The story is no secret. Even if you've never seen the ultra-cheesed-out original you know that an astronaut lands on a planet inhabited by a bunch of smart monkeys, and doesn't like being pushed around. As a kid I remember reading the "Apes" comic books with the little 45's in the back, and those left an indelible mark on my brain: images of aggressive monkeys dressed in hip 60s-style war togas; atomic bomb-worshipping men; general world destruction. And of course I remember the evil Dr. Zaius.

The new "re-imagined" "Planet of the Apes" left mental scars as well -- not scary or thought-provoking scars -- just plain old scars, like when you fall off a jungle gym or something. We begin our uberstupid-ness on a space station somewhere near Saturn, where some scientists/astronauts/people-in-white-clothing are training monkeys for solo space flights. Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) likes the primates enough but he wants a shot at flying for himself. When an electromagnetic (aka "time-travel") storm comes too close to the station, Leo decides to rescue a monkey that's already been lost in the static. He (of course) encounters some bright lights and big booms, and ends up crashing on a nearby planet.

As soon as he arrives, Leo realizes that things are a little off. He, along with hundreds of other humans, are kept in cages by walking and talking apes who want to trade them or kill them or brand them, or all three. But Ari (Helena Bonham Carter), the daughter of the Apes' political leader (and who bears an eery resemblance to post-surgical Michael Jackson), doesn't think humans should be abused and caged. Leo convinces her to purchase him from slave-trader Limbo (the hilarious Paul Giamatti) as a house-servant. Ari also buys Daena (Estelle Warren), the fiesty daughter of Kris Kristofferson who has a thing for Leo and dresses like Raquel Welch in "One Million Years B.C."

Leo and Daena end up working as caterers at Ari's father's dinner party. Guests include a snooty orangutan, a vicious gorilla named Colonel Attar (Michael Clark Duncan), and General Thade (Tim Roth), a Danny Devito-like chimpanzee who compensates for his short stature by growling at everything and jumping around a lot. When Thade's not wheezing like an asthmatic Jack Palance, he's trying to win over Ari, who's not really impressed with his Alpha-Male routine. She'd rather mate with the heroic yet sensitive spaceman, who returns Ari's longing glances and finds beauty in her ability to write with her feet. But Leo also yearns for Daena for some reason. An odd interspecies love triangle ensues.

Anyway, impatient Leo is anxious to get back to his ship, so he easily escapes from the ape city, taking Daena, Ari, Ari's gorilla bodyguard, and a few other stragglers with him. They travel over jungle and desert on their way to Calima, an ancient ruin that holds the secrets to the Apes' origins (gee, what could they be?). When we discover why the place is called "Calima" I have to wonder how stupid these apes really are.

Thade and his army march to Calima to have it out with that pesky astronaut once and for all, and then some other stuff happens that will either confuse you or disappoint you. Or both. Characters seen only briefly until now suddenly take presidence, only to disappear again.

The ending is just as random.

The monkey actors are generally decent, but are held back from being great by mumbling incoherently beneath rubber masks and waddling around like, well, like monkeys. The humans ain't that great either. Everyone is this movie just needed to shut up. Every time someone opened their mouth I rolled my eyes and prayed it wasn't yet another line taken from the original movie thrown into a new and supposedly funny context.

I don't know why this ended up being so bad. Tim Burton is a fabulous director who's brought marvelous vision to the screen before he wasted his time with this disjointed and sloppily-directed project. The "Planet of the Apes" story is a microcosm of racism and classism and how opposable thumbs are the coolest by far, that sort of thing. The new movie is a microcosm of stupidity. It's like that really obnoxious friend we all have that's hyperactive, vain, loud, and a lot less funny than s/he thinks. The comic book had all but one human lobotomized or mute, leaving that one desperate guy with no other choice but to escape and find his ship again. The apes were also a lot more scientific and a lot less animalistic, which in itself is quite frightening. But aside from the screeching and howling and Thade's ultra-hip armor, the apes in the new version aren't even all that scary. There's nothing left to Burton's story but broad strokes of one-dimensional characters who just happen to be in the same place at the same time. Just when it seems there will be the slightest bit of depth to anything, it vanishes like Charlton Heston's cameo.

Grades for "Planet of the Apes":

action: C plot: D acting: C- special effects: B- overall: D+/C-

When I was in film school, the projects in our screenings had a certain flavor to them, like when you wake up with a hangover and it feels like you have fur on your teeth. Yes, there were always some clever ones in there, making their mark and moving in new directions, but they were usually far outnumbered by imitations. Therefore it's become somewhat refreshing to see a commercial film in a theater, because even though I know it's going to be formulaic and horribly banal despite costing millions, it will at least have neat effects, some explosions, and a superstar. But `Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows,' which didn't have any of those things, made it feel like I was still stuck in a school screening, and never came close to even being somewhat tolerable on the `This Movie is Terrible' scale.

You've probably heard something about the plot of the original `Blair Witch Project': three students making a documentary disappear in the Maryland woods near Burketsville and a year later their footage is found. The film consists of the discovered footage, which is stitched together into a frightening, disturbing and actually pretty original piece of suspense (it would be horror except for the lack of graphic violence). It was released amid throngs of internet hype and media rumors that it was actually real (it wasn't).

In `Blair Witch 2,' there are some idiots who want to relive the experience of the students that vanished, so they each bring their obnoxious selves to the Black Hills of Maryland.

I'll use general descriptions for the generalized characters: first, the used-to-be-in-a-sanitarium-but-now-a-hip-youngster Black Hills tour guide; a Witch-obsessed woman who just found out she's pregnant; her weird and controlling boyfriend who can't act; a nature-oriented Wicca witch who throws leaves in her hair and wants to communicate with the Blair Witch; and last but not least, the token Goth child, who's pretty much along for the cigarettes and beer.

For the first ten minutes there are disturbing flashes of the Hip Youngster (hereafter known as Hipster) in an antiquated asylum full of employees with shaved heads and inmates that drool. Then some calendar dates indicating some sort of passage of time flash onto the screen, though one loses track of them after the 15,000th one.

That's all the background we receive before being catapulted to the fictitious woods where the Hipster leads the aforementioned stereotypical characters on a tour of the same course taken by the ill-fated characters of the first film.

The quintet stops at a site from the first film to camp out and absorb some freaky vibes. Before we know it they're smokin' dope, downin' some beers (yes, even Pregnant Lady parties with them) and chattin' about perception, reality, and all the other ideas the movie couldn't get across except in the dialogue. Though the group vows to stay awake there's something about mixing large amounts of alcohol with marijuana that makes people pass out, so of course they do.

They awake to find that their campsite has been ransacked, and then some other weird, gross stuff happens. Then, because their combined IQ scores are less than their combined ages, they all decide to stay at Hipster's dank but roomy apartment/abandoned factory that is located nearby. Thus begins the madness, or whatever.

For the rest of the movie we are subjected to some of the most disturbingly stupid imagery, acting, and plot lines I've ever had the misfortune of watching. Hallucinations, unwarranted explicit carnage, sounds of babies crying (give me a break), wrecked cars that are fixed the next minute and vice-versa, people disappearing and then reappearing, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. It was so predictable it made want to cry. The few scares came only from decibel level, not clever set-up and execution, and witty lines, which usually came out of Hipster's mouth, were few and far between the "fuck"s and the "shit"s and the "I need a beer"s. The only entertainment came from the high-schoolers behind me who kept yelling things at the screen like, `Look behind you!' and `Aw, *HELL* no, he ain't goin' in *THERE*!'

In the end we're meant to question our own realities, because what we think is actually happening may not be what is actually happening. Oh. Deep. I wish that'd been the case with me; I would have much rather been bowling or vacuuming my apartment than sitting there watching this movie. Plus, there is no book of shadows. Not even a brochure of shadows. What's THAT all about?

My grade for `Blair Witch 2: Book of Shadows': D

When a filmmaker like Taylor Hackford (`Devil's Advocate') forces an audience to sit through 2+ hours of Meg Ryan whining, we can only come away asking one question: why isn't Russell Crowe at least naked in this movie? The best we get is Crowe in a tank top and one kiss with Ryan that looks like it could single-handedly explain her breakup with Dennis Quaid, but that's it for consolation. So if you want to see Crowe, and I mean SEE Crowe, go rent something else.

`Proof of Life' begins in South America, where Alice Bowman's (Ryan) husband Peter (David Morse) works as a contractor for a local dam. They ambiguously act as if they matter to one another, and they also fight about the past using cryptic yet strained dialogue:

`I don't want this to be another Africa! I don't want to go through that again!' `Africa? Africa?! Don't even bring up AFRICA! I thought we'd been through AFRICA already, I thought we agreed! AFRICA! God, I can't believe you brought up AFRICA!'

And so on. They both could have died right there and it wouldn't have mattered to me.

Ryan's husband then gets kidnapped by rebel terrorists on the way to work one day (yay!), apparently because they're sick of hearing about Africa. No, actually they think Peter works for a big oil company that is ruining the ecosystem or something. Initially, Alice tries to use Peter's corporate terrorist person, but it turns out they don't have kidnapping insurance so she has to try the private sector. And so enters Terry Thorne (Crowe), an ex-SAS operative (the British special forces) who now works for one of those firms that rescues people from other people who have big guns and accents. Thorne seems to know what he's doing. He's tough on the phone negotiating with the bad guys and even tougher pistol-whipping them in person, of course acting cool the entire time. Oh, and he's hot.

During two of the longest hours of my life, the rebels and Thorne banter about cost and something called `proof of life,' which demonstrates that the kidnapped person is still alive and worth paying for. At no point did I ever feel like Peter was worth paying for, even before his whimpering self was taken hostage. I'd rather leave Peter in the rebel camp so he could learn another language and maybe get over that whole Africa thing.

Also featured is a bewildering editing technique whereby the scenes are cut just when they become interesting. Sometimes we even crossfade between two scenes featuring Alice and Peter, meant to force a connection that was quite possibly the least exciting part of the entire movie.

After what seems like an eternity, the deal goes sour and Thorne and his SAS buddies (including the hilarious David Caruso) decide to just go in and get Peter from the rebel camp. Gee, that would have been a good idea back at the beginning of this movie, huh? Actually, this sequence blew my mind compared to the rest of this boring piece of celluloid. Crowe looks incredible in fatigues and the action of the scene was flawless. The codenames tended to get a bit confusing and longwinded, though:

`Downtown 1, this is Downtown 3. I see two armed bogies headed for Downtown 2. Possible cargo in the storeroom. Downtown 1 do you read?'

`This is Downtown 1, Downdown 3. I copy Downtown 1. 10-4 Downtown 2.'

`Downtown 1, this is Downtown 2. I never asked you if you copied. But Downtown 3 and I are going downtown to check out a new club tonight. You in, Downtown 1?'

There isn't much to this movie except the reconnaissance scenes at the beginning and the end. The rest is fluffy terrorist lingo and Alice crying or whining but not really acting like she cares if Peter comes home. What killed the film for me was Peter holding onto Alice like an airline seat cushion during a water landing, while she seemed comparatively blasé about the whole thing.

In the back of my head, in the `I hope' section, I thought maybe she'd ask Thorne to kill Peter, but that would be too deeply emotional or something like that. Or maybe she could say something to Thorne like, `Oh, that's too much ransom money… oh, well! So, you want to go get a cup of coffee sometime?' I also hoped for a lurid sex scene (cut out of the final film -- WHY?). But, instead we're left only with memories of a fleeting romance of two people who met at the wrong time in their lives and who spent most of that time staring at one another. Oh, and we're also left with a cheesy song over the closing credits.

At least they weren't looking for proof of life in the theater audience…

My grade for `Proof of Life': B-

Every critic on the planet thought Godzilla demonstrated with absolute perfection what not to do when making a film, so 'I was bored' is my best excuse for why I saw this. From the title sequence I knew not to take this movie seriously, or at least, not to take this as a serious movie: Lizards sprawled on rocks wave their tongues as a nuclear bomb explodes. This is real drama, people.

When the movie begins, Godzilla has attacked a small island somewhere and people take notice. Well, the stupid people on the planet take notice: a scientist who studies radioactive grubs (hereafter known as worm guy) and some uncouth military leaders whose approach to combat strategies involves a lot of maps with arrows that point in no particular direction.

As Godzilla makes his way to New York City, a ditsy and highly irritating wannabe reporter also takes notice because she sees her college sweetie, worm guy (Matthew Broderick), on TV, looking at a big footprint. Apparently this was an attempt at a subplot, but you need a plot before you can have a subplot. The reporter's friends consist of an equally insipid co-worker and her loud cameraman husband. He's played by Hank Azaria, apparently the only one who was actually paid to act.

Okay, so FINALLY the lizard gets to New York City (he got stuck in traffic in the Lincoln Tunnel), and goes to see `Rent' on Broadway. Not really, but that would've been fun, huh? His less-than-subtle arrival is actually a pretty cool sequence, with the ground bouncing up and down and people staring around, though it copies a bit too much from Jurassic Park. The sluggish, hackneyed dialogue and the numerous shots of gaping-mouthed onlookers soon gets real old, real fast. We get it: Godzilla's here. Within 10 minutes, Godzilla tears through the place and then vanishes. Did I forget to mention that Godzilla is 100 feet tall and weighs more than 10 elephants? His disappearance is announced by `Melrose Place's' Doug Savant, playing one of many vapid military officers who whines through the entire film and manages to accomplish nothing.

The film contains lots of helicopter-following-Godzilla/Godzilla-following-helicopter chases, but the thought of 14 Tomcat choppers zipping through the maze of NYC buildings while chasing a giant lizard is more unbelievable than the reptile they're after. What can a helicopter do to what is essentially a giant salamander taller than the Empire State Building? And who would've thought to fly ABOVE the buildings? That's another problem with the film - there are too many easy answers that these supposedly bright people can't figure out. And no one seems to be frightened at all that they might die. The military and press calmly set up camp across the river in New Jersey, because we all know that Godzilla, who swam across the Atlantic Ocean, would never be able to wade across the Hudson River to eat his enemies.

Meanwhile, worm guy thinks of a brilliant plan to smoke out the elusive gargantuan lizard by FEEDING HIM. How scientific. Along the way there seem to be several attempts at a bonding between Broderick and Godzilla, but somehow that just doesn't play across on screen. Go figure.

The only suspenseful part that brings much needed excitement to the movie occurs when little 9' tall baby Godzillas hatch inside Madison Square Garden (they're trying to score Knicks tickets). I would have thought I was watching an original film if it weren't for the fact that it felt like exactly Alien meets Jurassic Park: the Lost World.

So finally it ends (I won't spoil *that* for you), the wannabe reporter pulls out her can o' whoop-ass on her boss and then reconciles with worm guy, and you leave feeling sorry for the big G.

To sum up, most of the special effects were not special at all. For the majority of the movie Godzilla is hiding under New York City so we don't even get to see him. Plus, his fire-breathing skills are nearly non-existent, when they would clearly be an effective weapon against flammable New York City and the less-than-competent armed forces (plus, adding fire always ups a movie's excitment factor). There was no plot, horrible acting, miscasting, an unbelievably stupid military, too many news-happy reporters, and lots of stereotypically mysterious, coffee-drinking, chain-smoking, complaining French people, who somehow had a hand in it all. If I had submitted this script to a studio, they would have taken me out in back and put me out of my misery. Maybe it was trying to make fun of the old Godzilla flicks, but I think it was just bad movie making, considering all the failed wisecracks that were painful to hear. It wasn't the worst movie I've ever seen, but it comes damn close.



My grade for "Godzilla": D-

What do Al Pacino, Charlise Theron, and Keanu Reeves all have in common? Not acting school, that's for sure. If you don't believe me (and I know you do), go and see "The Devil's Advocate."

Reeves plays Kevin, a money-hungry lawyer whose winning streak and ability to defend low-lifes attracts the attention of big-time New York City lawyer John Milton (yes, like the `Paradise Lost' poet). Milton (Al Pacino) gives Kevin a NYC apartment, a huge salary, parties, and a brand new high profile murder case. Pretty soon things start getting weird. Kevin's wife, Marianne (Theron), starts seeing things and becomes convinced Kevin's new colleagues are demons - is she crazy, or is she right? Dum-dum-dum-dumm! [dramatic chord] Along the way there are lots of jury selection scenes, paper-shredding scenes, lesbian insinuation scenes, and scenes where Al Pacino raises his voice. Dum-dum-dum-dumm! [another dramatic chord] And Keanu? Well, he pretty much stays the same. [no dramatic chord]

The thing is, it wouldn't be that bad if Keanu kept his voice low, whispering lawyer phrases like `Objection, your honor,' in a sultry, growling voice. That way I wouldn't have to hear him *try* to be southern, because he's clearly not. One semi-twangy word every couple of lines ain't quite like having your car horn beep `Dixie' as you drive through Hazzard County.

But to be fair, I think he felt the need to keep up with Al Pacino, whose acting secret has finally been revealed: the yell. Yes, Mr. Pacino-we don't care if you're robbing a bank, joining the family business, doing the tango blind on the dance floor or tackling the tobacco industry – just go ahead and yell. `Hoo-wah!' And now that you've been cast as Satan, what better opportunity will you ever have to yell more than this? But, if you're not going to yell, for instance during the high-class party scenes or the lesbian insinuation scenes, when yelling would simply be inappropriate, then just grin, throw your head back, and let out one of those word-famous guffaws. `Hah!' Oh, how we love Al's guffaws.

The most entertaining part comes when Keanu and Al clash at the climax. Here is one of the best actors in the world and one of the worst actors in the world, and they're just yelling at each other. After a while I didn't even care what was going on anymore, because all the essential secrets of the film were somehow revealed right before the yelling part, so for me it just seemed like an excuse for both of them to scream.

"My God, you're a bad actor!"

"Whoa!"

Charlise Theron wins the `Lawyer-wife-who-slowly-goes-insane-throughout-the-course-of-the-film' award. Craig T. Nelson wins the `Why-are-you-in-this?' award, simply because that's what I kept wondering. Jeffrey Jones (one of the most underrated actors of our time) gets the award for `Best-portrayal-of-a-central-park-mugging-victim' and Pacino wins for `Best-capped-teeth,' and also the `Most-outrageous-way-of-setting-holy-water-on-fire' award.

All in all, it's hard to tell what this film's message is-all lawyers are inherently evil and the spawn of Satan, or is this a clever analogy meant to question our own ethics and morals? I'm going with the spawn of Satan message.

My grade for `Devil's Advocate': C

There just aren't enough movies about hacking and technology these days. I think every movie this summer would benefit from a quadrillion computer screens and at least that many hackers, clad in leather and fashion-conscious eyewear, typing furiously and talking baud rates as if they were precious stock portfolio quotes. Oh, and I mean the punk kind of hackers, not those geeks who work on *real* computers.

And I think movies should always make a special publicity note to all the oversexed men that Halle Berry does indeed show her breasts on film, guaranteeing that demographics' ticket purchases. John Revolta's character, Gabriel Shear, begins the film with a speech about how much Hollywood sucks. Boy, is he right. I could barely hear him over the sound of his career imploding.

Stanley Jobson (Hugh Jackman) is an ex-hacker who bides his time away from computers (he's forbidden by the government to touch one) by bumming around his filthy trailer and begging his porn-star ex-wife to let him see their ten-year old, cell phone-toting daughter. But, Stanley is a few hundred-thousand dollars short of being able to take his daughter away from his wife, so he just goes back to his trailer and thinks about how to look sexy and greasy at the same time.

Along comes Ginger (Berry) and her barely-there outfits. She works for ex-Fed Shear, who sells nuclear warheads to all the wrong people and has loads of money, which he spends on women, cars, and stupid-looking goatees. Shear wants Jobson to program a computer "worm" to invade a secret Federal bank account filled with a surplus of confiscated drug money, and transfer the dough back to him. Basically, it's like any other heist plot, only much more ridiculous. Stanley refuses, but oral sex and a gun to his head make for good motivators, so he's soon on the team.

And thus begins the madness. Actually, the madness begins in the beginning, during a "flashback" of sorts, and then catches up with itself for the climax, during which a bus, CARRIED BY A HELICOPTER, is FLOWN over the city of Los Angeles. Yeah, like we don't see that all the time around here anyway.

The plot is pure cheese -- pure BAD cheese, as in "Stroker Ace" cheese, as opposed to halfway decent cheese, like "The Skulls" or "The A-Team". For instance, why is Jobson's ex-wife's husband a porn King? This has no relevance to much of anything at all, except to set up an obvious joke concerning the name of his company. Plus, the entire "I just want to get my daughter back" story is just so incredibly overdone at this point that I wonder why writers think resorting to it is the only way to explain why good people would be willing to do bad things. How about just plain greed? Like the producers of this movie?

The audience watching with me seemed to love the endless rampage of violence and average acting (except for maybe Don Cheadle, who even made his scenes in "Mission to Mars" tolerable), and gave a HUGE round of applause after an explosive device tied to a woman detonates with A-Bomb-like intensity and Matrix-like visuals (in other words, like a COPY). They also gasped during "the $600,000 scene," referring of course to the bonus Berry received for removing her clothes. They also loved the action, which, I'll admit, was non-stop and fairly exciting, even if it continually broke the barriers of physics and good taste.

If you're into that kind of blow-em-up, shoot-every-living-thing-in-sight type of movie, then maybe "Swordfish" is just the ticket. My grade for "Swordfish": C

"The Mummy Returns" is a very LOUD sequel that is really about 10 movies condensed into one. Unfortunately, not one of those movies is very interesting. Breaking down the plot to make sense would actually require a 10'x10' flowchart and a PowerPoint presentation, so I'll do my best without those.

The movie starts off with an army of people yelling at an army of snarling CG Enubis warriors. One of those armies is led by The Scorpion King (Duane "The Rock" Johnson), who gets his power from a cumbersome bracelet. There's a lot more yelling and screaming and somehow the King sells his soul to the God Enubis for the use of his army. But for some reason the King can't use the army until he arises back from the dead at some point in time, which of course just happens to coincide with the rest of the events of the movie. Confused yet?

A few centuries later, some people decide to wake up Imhotep, the mummy that we all thought died for sure in the first movie. Obviously, these idiots didn't pay to see "The Mummy" 2 years ago or they'd know that whenever Imhotep wakes up he's always in a bad mood and feels like taking over the world. Still, you'd think their reasons for resurrecting him would be justified. Wrong. Wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong, wrong. Nothing in this movie is justified.

They want to wake up Imhotep because he's the only one powerful enough to kill the Scorpion King and his army of Enubis. But whoever kills the King gets to take over the army, and so, once again, someone will have to kill Imhotep. Can I ask something? If Imhotep is more powerful than the S. King, and we don't think we can fight the King, how are we then supposed to kill the practically unstoppable Imhotep?

Wouldn't it make sense to just kill the Scorpion King and eliminate the middle mummy?

Our usual heroes are back from the first movie: Rick O'Connell (Brendan Fraser); his wife Evelyn (vamped-out Rachel Wise); and the sexy Ardeth Bay (Oded Fahr), one of those Mummy guardian people who are SUPPOSED to keep all this disastrous stuff from happening in the first place. And now we also have Alex, Rick and Evelyn's love child.

After coming home to London from an expedition, Alex accidentally puts on the Scorpion King's magic bracelet and is then kidnapped by the people who happen to be resurrecting Imhotep in a nearby museum. So now Rick, Evelyn, and the usual gang must try and find their son before the Scorpion King wakes up and wants his jewelry back.

On their way to find Alex, the group destroys a double-decker bus, sets fire to a library, somehow makes it back to Egypt, and recruits a token funny black guy to pilot a wishy-washy blimp that will take them to the Scorpion King's resting place. Meanwhile, Ardeth has recruited all the guardians to help in the fight against one or more of the bad guys (pick one, who cares?). The folks who kidnapped Alex are now accompanied by the resurrected Imhotep are also on their way to pay a visit to the Scorpion King. Remember? Imhotep is supposed to kill him, and we'll kill Imhotep. Oy, and, as if there wasn't enough happening already, the gang encounters these pygmie-type gremlin things in a bizarre oasis outside the Scorpion King's pyramid. The pygmies run around in the tall grass of the oasis and kill people. They looked fake and were pretty pointless.

Speaking of fake, if you blink at all while watching this movie, it's like missing out on $10,000,000 worth of computer graphics, including a wall of water that looks as if it were drawn in crayon by a 3 year-old, and a very fake Scorpion King in his "scorpio" form (I suppose the Rock was unavailable for pick-ups).

Other than being visually assaulting, the soundtrack consists of a looping "ARRRRRRRG!" type sound, and, at the end, when everything inexplicably self-destructs, there's just a deafening "WHOOOSSSSHHHH!" mixed in with the "ARRRRRGGGGG!" Even the ending credits are loud.

This movie will make so much money.

Chickens.

Lots and lots of chickens. Chickens from England, walking, running, and knitting. There's something really funny about British claymation characters, something that the creators of `Wallace and Grommit' have known for quite some time. `Chicken Run', their first full-length animated feature, brings together elements of `The Great Escape', `101 Dalmatians', and even some `Star Trek' to create a hilarious, smart, vegetarian conscious movie.

The crisis: the chickens are prisoners at a farm where unproductive hens are turned into dinner and even the prolific ones are treated like egg-laying slaves. The farm's evil owner then has a moment of fiendish clarity and realizes that gathering and selling eggs is boring. Making chicken pot pies would be much more profitable and probably a heck of a lot more fun, so she buys a pie machine. Well, you can't make pot pies without breakin' a few chickens, but since they're so cute--well, as cute as British chickens can be--we don't want them to die! We want them to run and fly outta there! Wait--chickens can't fly… or can they?

They answer is - no, of course chickens can't fly, sorry to disappoint you. But they can sure try, and try they do. This becomes one of the most entertaining parts of the whole film, as most training montages tend to be. With the help of a flying rooster (voice of Mel Gibson), and the leadership of funky chicken Ginger (the daughter from TV show `Absolutely Fabulous'), the ladies try everything from leaping off rooftops to being flung in giant slingshots, all with hilariously unsuccessful results.

Meanwhile, the evil farmer becomes all that much closer to completing her pot pie contraption, and the chickens still don't know how to fly.

Before they can escape they'll have to face the facts and realize that to get out they'll have to use their brains instead of their funny-looking wings. Each chicken has a special skill, from knitting (the fat, naive chicken) to engineering (the Scottish one with bad vision) that will have to work together to get them out.

Boy, the theme sounds corny, but it definitely works in this film.

`Chicken Run' teaches that although we can't fly, we have the right to say `Buwaaauck!' and eat corn off the ground as free fowl, without worry of laying eggs or becoming pot pies. Besides that, those little faces are enough to keep you entertained and wondering just how much patience someone must have to animate a film like this.

My grade for `Chicken Run': A

The last time I reviewed a film helmed by a music video director, I was very angry at what I'd seen (`Mystery Men'), but Tarsem Singh spares us the fish-eye lenses and commercial overindulgences and decides to concentrate on presenting an astonishing visual and audible journey into the mind of a serial killer in `The Cell'.

Carl Stargher (Vincent D'Onofrio) kills women by drowning them in glass cells, all the while videotaping the event. Afterwards, he disfigures the bodies to resemble dolls and then tosses the finished `products' off highways into ditches and streams. Nice guy. He also likes to suspend himself on chains attached to hooks inserted directly into his back. Lovely.

Meanwhile, FBI agent Peter Novak (Vince Vaughn) is hot on the killer's trail, and although Carl's started to get sloppy, he's just kidnapped another girl and she has 40 hours before her cell fills with water. Carl is soon apprehended, but only because he enters into a schizophrenic seizure and falls into a coma on his kitchen floor. A coma? But how are they going to find out where the last victim is? Oh, if only they could TRAVEL INSIDE HIS MIND. Hey, what a coincidence! Catherine Deane (Jennifer Lopez) is a child psychologist involved in an experimental project that allows her to TRAVEL INSIDE THE MIND of coma victims.

And so begins a strange array of visuals and sounds, blended together so unusually that you honestly feel like you're experiencing a dream… a not so pleasant dream. Not only is Carl's mind slightly twisted, it's violent, disturbingly sexual, and very graphic. But, it's also like a train wreck; you can't help but look. Oddly enough, Mr. Singh clearly had the resources to make his special effects scream out at you with bright color and absurd lavishness, but he chose instead to simplify, placing the terror in the scale and content of the visuals. I can't even use an example. All I can say is think about a dream you've had that you couldn't describe to someone, and that's what watching this movie is like. The photography is so stunning that it virtually eliminates the need for dialogue (only about half the film has discourse), and coupled with the horrifically spooky and scathing soundtrack, the film literally takes on a life of its own.

My only objection is that when all is said and done, the only character we really understand is the serial killer. Several clues about the other characters' pasts led me to believe that their lives would come into play and that their own memories would be tested and confronted. To me, this would have taken this story to yet another psychological level, but perhaps it would have been too much for viewers.

Despite this shortcoming, `The Cell' stills provides a myriad of images that will make you want to watch a lot of cute cartoons before turning in for the night. Still, I don't know what was more disturbing: the movie, or the parents in the next row over who brought their two small kids to watch it.

Do you like scary movies? Are you intrigued by plot twists, unconventional storytelling and imaginative filmmaking? Then you'll probably want to avoid `What Lies Beneath,' a slow, monotonous jog through the land of predictability and disappointment.

Norman (Harrison Ford), a genetic scientist, and his worrisome wife Claire (Michelle Pfeiffer) are getting used to having their large house all to themselves after their daughter leaves for college. At first it seems like the extra room and solitude will spice up their love life, but Claire starts experiencing paranormal incidents--weird voices, self-operating doors, images of apparitions, broken picture frames--and believes the ghost is the soul of her murdered neighbor. Meanwhile, several clues are presented to us about Claire's past: a mysterious car accident, a newspaper article about a missing local girl, and Norman's clandestine genetic experiments. Notice I said `clues', as in, `hints scattered about that supposedly have relevance to the plot'. Not so, apparently. `Clues' now mean `pointless, wasteful story beats that are intended to mislead but instead steer toward massive disappointment'.

For one, Norman's a geneticist. I had all these wonderfully twisted theories spinning around in my head, like `Oh, Claire and the missing girl are somehow genetically connected,' or `Oh, Norman's experimenting on his wife, messing with her genetic makeup,' or `Maybe she has a clone,' or `Oh, this has something having to do with all the clues I've been given.' But, why make a complicated movie, right? Why try to trick the audience in ways they've never been tricked before? People want to see the same kind of movie over and over and over and over and over… right? WRONG! (Well, maybe the dim-witted masters of the obvious who were sitting behind us.) BUT NOT ME! I kept hearing `surprise ending, surprise ending!' from everyone who had seen it. Yeah, RIGHT. Maybe a surprise to a single-celled organism that chews plankton and slithers along the bottom of a petrie dish.

If this sounds harsh, good. This movie was backed by so much talent--Ford, Pfeiffer, and director Robert Zemekis--that its shortcomings were, in my mind, inexcusable. The suspense set-ups were painfully kitchy, their only savior the respectable efforts by Ford and Pfeiffer. I wouldn't be surprised if they kept wondering all day what their characters were doing and why. This film gives new meaning to the clichéd phrase, `What's my motivation?'

Let's play a little logic game. True or false: If `art' is equal to `creative perfection', and `war' is equal to `horrendous dialogue', then `The Art of War' is equal to `the perfection of horrendous dialogue'. The answer, both logically and literally, is true.

`The Art of War', Hollywood's latest foray into the action genre, displays director Christian Duguay's passion for guns and bombs, and his brazen confidence to use a Technocrane for every shot possible. (Hey, those things are expensive... but so are good actors… oh, the choices one must make.) Mr. Duguay also likes wide-angle lenses and women's breasts, either at the same time or just alternating back and forth between the two. And he must absolutely LOVE Anne Archer and Donald Sutherland, or for that matter anyone with a speaking part, since he apparently didn't want to hurt their feelings by telling them to re-do takes because they SUCKED. I haven't seen acting this bad since George Lucas decided he was a director. Did I say that out loud?

Action-wise, `The Art of War' retains enough intensity and drive to be moderately interesting, however I was disappointed by its refusal to allow more martial arts instead of just bullets, although the audience seemed to enjoy the splooches of blood and guts. One act of pure visceral violence received actual cheering and clapping. But, my point is that obviously Wesley Snipes can do karate, so why doesn't he do more? The opening sequence teases us into thinking all the fights will be engaging and smartly choreographed, but then the movie gets started and, well, then they're not.

Plot-wise, this film equals-and possibly surpasses-`The World is Not Enough' in lack of purpose and excess of down-and-dirty obfuscation. What's it about? Well, explaining it is like reading the opening pages of a classical Russian novel, with three pages of characters and no sense of how they connect to one another. There are some bad Chinese guys and some good Chinese guys and there are some good Americans and some bad Americans. They're mad about a trade agreement that is discussed at length during every scene featuring dialogue, however I couldn't tell you for the life of me what it entails or why the movie centers around it. There's a secret agent who is framed for killing a Chinese ambassador, and then there's a Chinese interpreter who complains a lot and then gets locked in a bathroom with a cell phone that's low on batteries.

During what seemed like the two longest hours of my life there are also various acts of violence; stabbings, punctures, slashings, chokings, shootings, beatings, breakings, snappings, crunchings, decapitations, and, everyone's favorite, the classic shard-of-glass-in-the-neck. Actually, `The Art of War,' despite its name, is not what I would call a violent movie. Instead, I would say that during parts that usually gravitate toward violence, it gravitated… and then smashed onto the surface of Planet Carnage.

With regards to the acting, I have much to say but none of it is nice. Donald Sutherland looks like he showed up five minutes after waking up, ran his fingers through his hair, quickly read over his lines, and then ran off to do `Space Cowboys'. Ann Archer displays an impressive talent for reading lines without any inflection whatsoever, and Wesley Snipes has maybe 20 lines throughout the whole film, all stolen from the trash can of the `Rambo III' scripting room.

To conclude, `The Art of War' presumes too much, even going so far as to include `art' in its title. It presumes that a convoluted story and even more contrived and tortuous dialogue will be enough to interest viewers while they're not watching guns and explosives and the occasional boob. It presumes that as a contemporary action movie it must drench itself in technology and ridiculous gadgetry, yet refuse to be imaginative with ackwardly placed flashbacks that are in slo-mo grainy black and white. And finally, it presumes that flashy photography and gaudy sets will make up for the fact that the only thing happening is the squandering of a lot of money.