In, 1972, a scale of measurement was established for alien encounters. When a UFO is sighted, it is called an encounter of the first kind. When evidence is collected, it is known as an encounter of the second kind. When contact is made with extraterrestrials, it is the third kind.

The next level, ABDUCTION, is the fourth kind. This encounter has been the most difficult to document until now. Structured unlike any film before it, The Fourth Kind is a provocative thriller set in modern-day Nome, Alaska, where -- mysteriously since the 1960s -- a disproportionate number of the population has been reported missing every year. Despite multiple FBI investigations of the region, the truth has never been discovered.

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The most common retort one gets when talking negatively of a film clearly intended to be consumed with a tub of popcorn and a brain switch in the off position is "Why can't you just enjoy the movie?" And I get that. I am the kind of viewer who can absolutely just sit back and let sights and sounds wash over them. But what some fail to understand is that even with the brain turned off, even with disbelief firmly suspended, some movies stink so ferociously that the stench wafts off of the screen, snapping even the most resistant critic to full alertness like a slap in the face by a glove spiked with smelling salts.

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Earlier this week, I was alerted via the quick-witted wench over at theFlick Filosopher that the marketing folks at Anchor Bay Entertainment had made use of one of my quotes in marketing Kim Basinger’s housewife-in-jeopardy “thriller,” While She Was Out. And a quick check of the movie’s website revealed as much:

“For the Christmas season, prepare to be baptized by the Basinger.” —Pajiba.com

It’s a pretty sweet quote, though it doesn’t take into account the derisive, tongue-in-cheek nature in which it was delivered, nor the fact, as The Flick Filosopher pointed out, that I had never actually seen the film. The quote, in fact, was from our write-up on the film’s trailer.

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"Bring It On" starred Kirsten Dunst and Eliza Dushku and in 2000, the film nearly $70 million domestically. Dunst was a rising star, but "Bring It On" only made her star shine brighter before starring in "Spider-Man" two years later. The film was not well received by critics, but clearly showed there was an interest in cheerleading movies as "Bring It On" has now seen four direct-to-video sequels released. The films speak largely to female teenagers who enjoy watching strong female characters cheer in All-Star squads. Each of the sequels have taken place in their own little universe where there is no connection to previous films and none of the sequels have been received warmly, but "Bring It On" continues with "Fight to the Finish" and I´m guessing this won´t be the finish of the series.

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If there was a B-movie university, and there should be, “The Slaughter” would be a prime learning tool. It is a textbook example of a horror flick for B-movie 101 class. Keep your cast in one setting to drive down costs? Check. Have a cheap monster pick off the cast one by one? Check. Throw some blood and breasts at the screen to see if something interesting happens? Check. “The Slaughter” has rolled off the B-movie assembly line to fill that gaping hole on the video store shelf. Because if it’s one thing the world needs, it’s more straight to video horror movies.

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"This is a man practiced in deceit," says one character of another in Burn After Reading. "It's almost his job." Deceit is very much the job of the new film from Joel and Ethan Coen. It's as if, after winning two fat Oscars (best picture and director) for their fairly straightforward adaptation of Cormac McCarthy's No Country for Old Men, the brothers needed to reassert their old capricious cunning, their weasily larkishness, their independence from easy acclaim. "Just because you agree with the Academy that we made the best film of 2007," they seem to be warning their fans, "don't think you're any closer to figuring out our motives. We're still tough to get. Deceit is our job, our pleasure and your challenge."


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Prachya Pinkaew is largely responsible for some of the best martial arts movies in recent memory. Films like “Ong Bak”, “Tom Yum Goong” (aka “The Protector”), and “Chocolate” are full to overflowing with flying knees, spinning elbows, and basically crazy Muay Thai freaks doing insane stunts, and that’s what makes them great. His latest movie, “Elephant White”, is his first English-language feature, and has just been released direct to video.

While there are some admirable qualities (any movie that begins with an exploding motorcycle gang can’t be all bad), “Elephant White” is an underwhelming experience. Pinkaew sticks to his standard criminal underworld fare, but this film makes abundantly clear that it was his collaboration with actors like Tony Jaa, who is essentially a gnarly little stunt dude, that really made his movies stand out. This time around Pinkaew works with more veteran actors, who happen to be much less accomplished fighters, and the movie suffers for it. In a movie like this you can forgive a lot in other aspects if the action is good enough (no one is going to accuse “Ong Bak” of having the greatest story ever told). However, in the case of “Elephant White”, while the action isn’t bad, it pales in comparison to Pinkaew’s other movies.

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The messy complexities of modern family life provide a familiar backdrop to Love And Other Impossible Pursuits. The latest film from writer/director Don Roos (The Opposite of Sex) is sweet and sensitive but also predictable and protracted as the central heroine resolves an abundance of emotional issues resulting from a new marriage, a wary stepson, the death of her baby and her simmering anger at the way her philandering father abandoned her mother.


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If the posters for Franklyn remind you of something else, it's probably for good reason - Jonathan Preest (Ryan Phillippe), the film's masked vigilante and the focus of its marketing effort, shares more than a common dress sense with Alan Moore's Rorschach, currently adorning posters everywhere for the upcoming adaptation of 'Watchmen'.

Similarly, debut director Gerald McMorrow's bleak vision of Meanwhile City - a fictional metropolis bathed in black - has featured at the centre of the film's marketing.

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In Speed-Dating, three buddies engage in that very analog hookup practice in which singles are paired up according to assigned numbers and have a small amount of time to lure their potential mates into bed. Not that Too Cool (the very hot Wesley Jonathan), Dog (Chico Benymon), and Beaver (Leonard Robinson) are Luddites nostalgic for pre-Craigslist modes of cruising, or that straight folk get the sexual technology memo rather late in the game. The group of friends runs the speed-dating soiree as a scheme so that they can handpick the women allowed to participate and control who gets matched up with who.






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I began this blog in its original incarnation so that I could express my thoughts and feelings on television shows of which I am rabidly fanatical. I don’t usually have anything to say about much else, though occasionally something outside the realm of TV finds a crack in the exterior and makes its way in. It usually has to involve something about which I’m very passionate or that touches me in a very specific way.


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Not your run-of-the-mill Londoners, the characters in Boogie Woogie are a gaggle of (take your pick) hugely rich, greedy, sneaky, promiscuous, self-serving, coke-indulging, desperate denizens of the contemporary art world scheming as (again your pick) buyers, sellers, collectors, gallery drones, curators, publicists, creators and wannabes. Mostly all drool around a much-sought-after painting—Mondrian’s Boogie Woogie, the artist’s supposed first work.

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In 1850s Appalachia, 10-year-old CADI FORBES feels responsible for her little sisters death, so she searches out the one man she feels can take away her sin -- The Sin Eater. But in her quest for redemption, Cadi uncovers a dark secret that threatens to divide her family and community.

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A future-set story where robot boxing is a popular sport and centered on a struggling promoter (Jackman) who thinks hes found a champion in a discarded robot. During his hopeful rise to the top, he also discovers he has an 11-year-old son who wants to know his father.

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