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Friday, April 18

Major Payne & Suffering

The Forbidden Kingdom
A Misfortune Cookie
Trailers & Mo


Jet Li AND Jackie Chan, finally together, in the SAME MOVIE!?!?! WOWZERS! That's probably how we woulda felt if the year was 1998, not 2008, but netter bate than lever, eh? Not so much. Directed by the guy that brought us two Stuart Littles, The Haunted Mansion and was an animator on many a Disney projects, you can probably guess at how KICK ASS this movie could possibly be. You guessed correctly, NOT MUCH AT ALL! No one's seeing a movie like this for the story, so all the pressure rests on the action... and the action is more played out than 3-year old Play-Doh. Yuen Woo-ping (The Matrix dude)'s fight choreography has now become about as exciting as watching the paid programming on C-Span 4 (please note there is no such thing as C-Span 4). To make matters worse, it's almost all in English, and we all know that Li and Chan's mastery of the language is about as proficient as this website is. And to make splatters even worser, they had to throw an American kid obsessed with Kung-fu into the mix, we presume to appeal to a wider audience. The kid, played lamely by Michael Angarano, is supposed to be from Boston, but he doesn't have an accent and more importantly, any bidness being in this. In the flick, the characters have to go through something called 'a gate of no gate', so using their refarted terminology, this is a movie of no movie, and we forbid you to see it

In America, It's Bling Bling: but out here it's BINGBING, as in Li Bingbing. YUM!!!


John Grisham's Jizzum (aka Verdict): Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous


88 Minutes
Brainless In Seattle
Trailers & Mo


Leelee Sobieski, Benjamin McKenzie, Neal McDonough, William Forsythe, Deborah Kara Unger and (the beyond delicious) Alicia Witt. All of these actors were once seen as rising stars and all of these actors are falling even faster now that they've joined Al Pacino in 88 Minutes, one of the least thrilling thrillers of recent memory. From the opening murder scene, you can juss tell that this baby is dead on arrival (sorta pun intended?). It's clunky, doesn't make a lick of sense, and is purty much an entire movie consisting of Al Pacino running around Seattle (or is it Vancouver made to look like Seattle?), telling his assistant Amy Brenneman to do 324882 tasks, and occasionally being shot at. Why is he being shot at and not the director or the screenwriter? Dunno, but we do know that Pacino has 88 minutes to live. Sadly the movie is 20 minutes longer than the title, and each time the killer calls Al to remind him how much longer he has left to live, the killer keeps reminding the viewers how much longer we have to endure watching this crap

Double Trouble: Pacino's worked with the number 88 before, Mandy Patinkin played 88 Keys, the piano player in Dick Tracy. He's also going to work with DeNiro and director Jon Avent again, in Heat 2 Righteous Kill. Be afraid, be very afraid!!

John Grisham's Jizzum (aka Verdict): Slit Your Eyes Out Repoopulous


The Life Before Her Eyes
Fairy-fail Ending
Trailers & Mo


Apparently director Vadim Perelman loves a good flick where awful horrible awful things happen to its main characters. If you saw his brilliant debut House of Sand and Fog (the original pairing of Behrooz and his mum) you know of what diarrhea we diarrhea of. Well olde Vad is at it again with his sophomore effort, The Life Before Her Eyes, and this time he's bringing the pain Columbine style. The story revolves around loose girl Evan Rachel Wood and her polar opposite BFF, bible loving Eva Amurri (the second coming of her MILF ), who get caught up in the crossfire and one of them ends up dead. Flash to the future, where ERW is growns up and is played, unconvincingly, by Uma Thurman. Everything seems purty good for her with hubbie and kid, but as we keep shuttling back and forth from the past and present, we start to learn that maybe all is not so swell. The scenes with Wood and Amurri are poetic and moving. The ones with Thurman, poor and made us want to move outta the theater. And then there's the final scenes. We won't say what happens, but we will say that there's a twist as incredibly nonsensical as Haute Tension's that every bit that came before it renders itself pointless

Cutie Patootie: Nathalie Paulding may have a bit part in the movie, but she now has a big part of our hearts! Peep this montage someone flazzumed in her honor


John Grisham's Jizzum (aka Verdict): Sum Merit But No Stinking Badges


Kingdom and 88 open across the country today, while Life opens in limited release

until next thyme the balcony is clothed...


# Major Payne & Suffering