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It overstays its welcome a bit (too much fighting!), but it is very very funny. I like this a hell of a lot more than all of the serious martial arts classics that I am supposed to love. I suppose I am just really not a fan of that genre.

Sigh. Everyone would have known that Captain Archer’s psychology had been compromised when he got zapped by the Xindi-Reptillian amniotic fluid if they EVER WATCHED STAR TREK.

This same exact episode happened on Voyager but with Seven of Nine running around all alone on the ship rather than Dr. Phlox. They are both okay, but have obvious different qualities.

Maybe there is just something wrong with me. This is one of the most beloved martial arts films of the last ten years – some say it sets a new bar for greatness – and I found it to be a drag.

They talk about balance, about honor, they fight, some die, there are over-the-top slo-mo shots set to dramatic booms on the soundtrack, there’s a big finish, we all go home.

I just can’t sink my teeth into the genre. I just isn’t for me.

The fights are impressive, though.

I automatically have love and respect for anything as wacked out as this – a music hall fantasia on World War I – but I can’t say it is that engaging. Oh, it’s weird and interesting, but I can’t say it is good. Also, I’m simply not British enough to quite get some of the references.

I absolutely loved the energy of this mad Soviet/French co-production from just before the end of Communism.

It is about an unlikely friendship between an angry, aggressive taxi driver and a childish, irresponsible, insane and impish alcoholic/saxophonist. When the two men aren’t trying to kill one another they are hanging out in a dirty apartment yelling.

This is a gloriously ugly film, blending the best of Kusturica’s Underground, Jarmusch’s Stranger Than Paradise and Gilliam’s Fisher King. You can smell the mildew in the repugnant locations and it all feels wonderfully alive and real.

This pic won big at Cannes in 1990 but I’ll admit I never heard of it til the DVD release from about one or two years ago. It’s been sitting on my mythical “pile” of review DVDs I am lucky enough to receive, but don’t ever get around to. Funnily enough, it was a different movie that I was going to watch, Cargo 200, that I first popped in. For some reason it wouldn’t work on my Blu-ray player and I thought, “hey, I think I have another Russian film laying around here somewhere.” Nothing against Cargo 200, but I’m glad it didn’t work.

Complete low budget outer space lunacy. Only Cosmos: War of the Planets comes close. This certainly looks better – and has the benefit of some very serious Christopher Plummer speeches.

I’m thrilled I have this (on Blu-ray!) and plan to watch it again very soon.

For the longest time I thought I loved this movie, but when I watched it again the other day I found it to be a bore. I simply must be confusing it with the sequel, Demetrius and the Gladiators. In fact, I know I am.

This is *okay*, I suppose, but very silly. The dude who plays Caligula is also Petri the Troyian Ambassador from the TOS episode Elaan of Troyus, so that’s kinda awesome.

Two big things have been occupying my time for the past months. One, I am preparing for a two week trip to Israel that has me more excited than any other trip I’ve taken in my life. Two, I’ve been doing a lot of flying. A lot.

I’m the world’s worst packer and one of the things that has made difficult for me has been lugging around Michener’s incredibly entertaining (some might even call it good) one thousand page novel about Israel called The Source. In typical fashion I have a hardback copy (actually, an original printing, borrowed from my Mom, but it is now worn to shit) and it is as weighty as the legacy of history that hangs around the Chosen Peoples’ neck.

Michener frames his story with a pre-67 American-led archeological dig in a fictional city near the Galilee. They discover artifacts dating from 1948 to the dawn of time, stopping at various points in history (the Crusades, birth of Islam, Roman Empire etc) along the way. Each look into the past is its own short story, flashing back to “today” for indirect commentary.

Michener delivers history with the right spoonfuls of sex and violence as well as focusing on the odder, more gossipy parts of a forgotten culture. It’s cliff notes history, maybe, but it ensures that there’s something at least somewhat interesting on every page. It isn’t a textbook, nor is it literature, but it is far more well-rounded (and well-meaning) than cheap beach reading.

The prose gets odd once in a while – like presenting as reporting the occasional divine interaction – and there’s one section that is oddly first person. Is this because this was written in a pre-word processor era when dude had to bang out another thousand page novel on deadline and no one had the energy to go back and re-type? I honestly think this could be part of it. . . .or maybe I’m just excusing some cheesy moments in the writing because of my overall fascination with the subject matter.

I can say this, though, that when I am in Akko, Safed and Tiberius in a few weeks, I’m going to be looking around for certain fictitious things that I know never really happened there but feel like they did.

After Lord-knows-how-long of people saying, “you read Walking Dead, right?” I finally broke down and read the first trade.

About 40 minutes later, I immediately ordered cheap copies of the next six collections.

So, yeah. . .you read Walking Dead, right?

When done right, there’s nothing like a good, slow burn. If you like movies where tension mounts behind stern scowls and muted cries for justice until the very screen explodes with ballistic force, Takashi Miike’s 13 Assassins is for you. It is a straightforward samurai tale in crystalline form that makes no attempt to be revisionist or post-modern. It broods, it trains, it fights, and does all of these things very well.

Read the rest (and see video) at UGO.com.

I controversially break away from the pack and call this much lauded movie a bit of a snooze.

Read my review (and watch the vid) at UGO.com, so when you see the movie you can either agree or disagree with me.

This video kinda speaks for itself.

You can also watch this, but it is blurry and small – nothing like the pristine projection I saw.

The winner of the Audience Award at Fantastic Fest 2010, Bedevilled, nearly made me throw up. It was not the most violent film I saw, but it was definitely the saddest. It proves once again that cinematic brutality stems from an emotional connection, rather than sheer gore. Bedevilled really got to me.

Read more and see video at UGO.com.

Fantastic Fest 2010’s “Secret Screening #4″ was the first – and I mean the first – look at the newest mock-doc Trollhunter. Still a work in progress and yet to be seen even by the film’s distributor, Trollhunter is a charming little low budget goof about keeping Norway’s troll problem in check.

Read more (and see video) at UGO.com.

Crowd-pleasing, mindless fun.

Read a full review at UGO.com.

I think Golden Slumber might actually be some sort of masterpiece.

Making a good movie in any genre is tough enough, but some filmmakers risk blending more than one. It oftentimes makes for a mess, and audiences saying “oh, I wish they just stuck to making this a thriller,” but when it actually works, like with the Coen Brothers or Roman Polanski or David Cronenberg, it really pays off. Yoshihiro Nakamura’s Golden Slumber is one of these cases.

It is a paranoid thriller, a broad comedy and a nostalgic look back at young adulthood.

Read more (and see video) at UGO.com.

If you took Alejandro Jodorowsky’s El Topo, added some of Werner Herzog’s Even Dwarves Started Small, set it to a Bollywood beat and kept the running time to 150 minutes you’d have. . . .a film of really limited appeal.

Read more (and see video) at UGO.com.