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Austin Powers In Goldmember
Comedy New Line Home Entertainment PG-13
Despite symptoms of sequelitis, "Austin Powers in Goldmember" is must-see lunacy for devoted fans of the shagadelic franchise. Unfortunately, the law of diminishing returns is in full effect: for every big-name cameo and raunchy double-entendre, there's an equal share of redundant shtick, juvenile scatology, and pop-cultural spoofery. All is forgiven when the hilarity level is consistently high, and Mike Myers--returning here as randy Brit spy Austin, his nemesis Dr. Evil, the bloated Scottish henchman Fat Bastard, and new Dutch disco-villain Goldmember--thrives by favoring comedic chaos over coherent plotting. Once they've tossed Austin into the disco fever of 1975 (where he's sent to rescue his father, gamely played by Michael Caine), Myers and director Jay Roach seem vaguely adrift with old and new characters, including Verne Troyer's Mini-Me and pop star Beyoncé Knowles as Pam Grier-ish blaxpo-babe Foxxy Cleopatra. A bit tired, perhaps, but Powers hasn't lost his mojo. "--Jeff Shannon"

Azumanga Daioh - Vol 1 - The Animation
Anime.Comedy A.D. Vision NR
Based on a comic by Kiyohiko Azuma, "Azumanga Daioh" is the anime equivalent of a '50s girls' novel. Ten-year-old prodigy Chiyo and transfer student Osaka join the crowd at a Tokyo high school, adding to the comic misadventures. Their hard-drinking, potty-mouthed English teacher Yukari resents the popularity of the saner gym teacher Nyamo, even though they’re old friends and former classmates. "Azumanga" lacks any sort of sustained storyline or character development; it's just a series of incidents and encounters involving the kids and the two teachers. The only recurring male character is the leering Mr. Kimura, who teaches because he likes to ogle the students. Adolescent girls may enjoy sharing the featherweight daily problems of Tomo, Yomi, Sakaki, Kaorin, Chihiro, Chiyo, and Osaka, but "Azumanga Daioh" isn't really about anything. (Rated 13 and older: profanity, alcohol use, minor risqué humor) "--Charles Solomon"

Azumanga Daioh - Vol 2 - Festivals
Anime.Comedy A.D. Vision NR
The second set of episodes in this fluffy "shojo" (girl's) series plays like a cross between the Bobsey Twins and "Seinfield". Tomo, Yomi, Sakaki, Kaorin, Chihiro, Chiyo, and Osaka continue their day-to-day escapades at their Tokyo school, but nothing out of the ordinary occurs. Ten-year-old Chiyo confesses she would like to be tall, like Sakaki--who would like to be as cute as Chiyo. Sakaki reveals she collects stuffed animals because her parents won't allow her to have a pet. English teacher Yukari continues her disastrous attempts at one-upsmanship with gym-teacher Nyamo at the school cultural and sports festivals, while Mr. Kimura leers at the students. Unlike Arima and Yukino in "His and Her Circumstances", the characters in "Azumanga Daioh" don't face real personal challenges. But their very ordinariness may be the source of the girls' appeal. (Rated 13 and older: cartoon violence, minor risqué humor) "--Charles Solomon"

Azumanga Daioh - Vol 3 - Rivals
Anime.Comedy A.D. Vision NR
As this popular "shojo" (girls') series continues, English teacher Yukari's self-defeating rivalry with gym teacher Nyamo fades into the background. Tomo, Yomi, Sakaki, Kaorin, Chihiro, Chiyo, and Osaka begin their sophomore year, and are joined by Kagura, an athletic girl who's desperate to challenge Sakaki to a contest--any contest. Although physically talented, Sakaki remains oblivious to everything except the stray cats she chases, invariably getting bitten for her trouble. When exam time rolls around, Kagura, Osaka, and Tomo proclaim themselves "the Knuckleheads," and vie for the lowest scores. Cheerful 11-year-old Chiyo rediscovers the pleasures of jumping rope, which her old friends tell her is once again popular in elementary school. Untroubled by "mecha", monsters, supernatural events, and boys, the girls in Ms. Yukari's class pursue their pleasant daily routines. (Rated 13 and older: cartoon violence, minor risqué humor, alcohol use) "--Charles Solomon"

Azumanga Daioh - Vol 4 - Friends
Anime.Comedy A.D. Vision NR
Hooray! Festival season is back! Get ready for a slew of crazy new challenges in the sports fest, culminating in an action-packed 10-K race. The ever-hyper Tomo is dying from excitement, but Osaka is afraid of just plain dying! Later, Chiyo-chan adds to the hilarity as she scrambles to pull things together for this year’s culture fest. Will it be a big hit – or a miserable miss – for our cast of high school cuties? But wait – there’s more! Curricular activities aren’t the only source of action. Between classes, the girls doggedly debate things like the color of pandas, the merits of dieting, and the existence of Santa – or even more improbable, Mr. Kimura’s wife! And, speaking of spouses, isn’t it time Minamo found a man? Her busybody mother sure seems to think so! With trips to Hokkaido, Magical Land and a hilarious visit to the local karaoke club, this charming, comical, costumed volume of Azumanga Daioh proves once and for all that time spent with friends is time well-spent!

Azumanga Daioh - Vol 5 - Seniors
Anime.Comedy A.D. Vision NR
Two years down and one to go! Chiyo, Sakaki and the rest of the girls enjoy their last school year filled with a hysterical trip to Okinawa, the last chance to score a victory at the sports fest and so much more. Sharpen your pencils for another bungling year with the Azumanga girls.

Azumanga Daioh - Vol 6 - Graduation
Anime.Comedy A.D. Vision NR
School's almost out! But, it ain't over yet, a mountain of career sheets and homework threatens to drown the girls in a wave of paper. Exams are looming larger than ever. Sakaki faces off with the gray cat for the last time! It's all here in the grand finale of Azumanga Daioh!

The Benchwarmers
Comedy Sony Pictures PG-13
Credit "The Benchwarmers" for achieving the impossible: It makes the 2005 remake of "The Bad News Bears" look like a masterpiece. They're essentially the same film, with the same lowbrow PG-13 humor (mostly involving bodily functions, broad slapstick, little people, nerds, geeks, and nose-picking), but this baseball comedy earns a few brownie points for its heart-warming message about including non-athletic kids (i.e. "benchwarmers") in Little League baseball, if only to boost their confidence and give them a moment of ball-field glory. It's a pleasant sentiment intended to encourage under-achievers to feel good about themselves, and that makes this loose-and-goofy vehicle for Rob Schneider, David Spade, and "Napoleon Dynamite"'s Jon Heder an easygoing time-killer. Parents with good taste should be warned that his movie has no taste at all (it's hopelessly mired in the swamp of fart jokes and juvenile sight-gags), and is there really a need for mild profanity in a movie like this? That said, there are a few laughs in the efforts of Schneider and his ultra-nerdy pals as they form a team of rejects and go to bat against an enemy squad of current and former school-bullies, led by former late-night talk-show host Craig Kilborn. In addition to Schneider and Spade, "Saturday Night Live" alumni Jon Lovitz and Tim Meadows show up for an easy paycheck, and director Dennis Dugan handles the dumb-and-dumber shtick as if he were on vacation, sipping margaritas and shamelessly going for the easy laughs. If that's what you're looking for, you've come to the right place."--Jeff Shannon"

Bend It Like Beckham
Comedy 20th Century Fox PG-13
"Bend It Like Beckham" is true girl power. This glorious comedy centers on Jess (Parminder Nagra), an Indian girl born in England whose only desire is to become a football--or, as we say on this side of the Atlantic, soccer--star like her idol, David Beckham; but her traditional family refuses to even consider it. With the help of her new friend Juliet (Keira Knightley), Jess secretly joins a girls' team under the guidance of a male coach (Jonathan Rhys Meyers). As the team starts to gain some attention, Jess's secret can't be kept forever. The story of "Bend It Like Beckham" is so genuine and detailed that it transcends all the sports-movie formulas that it also fulfills with cheeky exuberance. Wonderfully acted, and written and directed with loving care by Gurinder Chadha ("Bhaji on the Beach", "What's Cooking?"), this movie is pure delight from start to finish. "--Bret Fetzer"

Benny and Joon
Comedy MGM (Video & DVD) PG
An oddball love story about a fey loner named Sam (Johnny Depp), who falls in love with the mentally unbalanced Joon (Mary Stuart Masterson), who lives in the care of her protective brother Benny (Aidan Quinn). This 1993 story is hard to swallow, with its message that love can conquer a brand of mental illness that manifests itself in pyromania: Joon has a bad habit of going a bit around the bend and setting fires, but Sam's tender care apparently has the cure for what ails her. Still, if you want proof that Depp has significant chops as a physical comedian, give this film a try: He does note-perfect renditions of slapstick routines made famous by Charlie Chaplin and Buster Keaton. "--Marshall Fine"

Beverly Hills Cop
Action.Adventure Paramount R
While its sequels were formulaic and safe, the first "Beverly Hills Cop" set out to explore some uncharted territory, and succeeded. A blend of violent action picture and sharp comedy, the film has an excellent director, Martin Brest ("Scent of a Woman"), who finds some original perspectives on stock scenes (highway chases, police rousts) and hits a gleeful note with Murphy while skewering L.A. culture. Good support from Judge Reinhold and John Ashton as local cops not used to doing things the Detroit way (Murphy's character hails from the Motor City). Paul Reiser has a funny, brief moment at the beginning, and Bronson Pinchot makes a hilarious impression in a great, never-to-be-duplicated scene with the star. "--Tom Keogh"

Beverly Hills Cop II
Action.Adventure Paramount R
The 1988 sequel to one of the most successful movies of all time finds Eddie Murphy reprising his role as Detroit police detective Axel Foley, and once again playing a fish out of water as he tries to solve a series of heists in Beverly Hills that may be connected to the attempted murder of his friend, a Beverly Hills police captain (Ronny Cox). Constructed in a much flashier and faster-paced visual style than the first film, the song still remains the same as Foley tries to keep his job in Detroit while solving crimes for the Beverly Hills cops. Murphy again makes the most of culture shock for comic effect, and the easy rapport between Murphy and Billy (Judge Reinhold), now a cheerfully over the top "Rambo"-esque figure, is still the centerpiece of this series. While not the least bit original, director Tony Scott ("Crimson Tide", "Top Gun") puts his own stamp on this installment and keeps the action and the laughs coming. "--Robert Lane"

Big Trouble in Little China
Action.Adventure 20th Century Fox PG-13
Once you settle into the realization that this 1986 John Carpenter ("Halloween") film is not going to be one of the director's more masterful works, "Big Trouble in Little China" just becomes a full-tilt comic blast. Kurt Russell is hilarious as a drawling, would-be John Wayne hero who steps into the middle of a supernatural war in the heart of Chinatown. While kung fu warriors and otherworldly spirits battle over the fate of two women (Kim Cattrall and Suzee Pai), Russell's swaggering idiot manages to knock himself out or underestimate the forces he's dealing with. The whole thing is dopey, but it's supposed to be dopey and Russell's game performance brings an ironic edge. Carpenter directs some nifty spook effects (the sudden arrival of three martial arts demigods from out of nowhere is worth applause), and he also wrote the music. "--Tom Keogh"

The Black Dahlia
Drama Universal Studios R
Brian de Palma made an odd decision in creating this apparently very expensive, very strange and confusing version of a film, a movie less about the grisly/twisted unsolved murder (grossly illustrated ad infinitum here) of a wannabe 1940s actress of the title and more about two boxer cops (bland Josh Hartnett as 'Mr. Ice' and over the top Aaron Eckhart as 'Mr. Fire') and their bizarre ménage a trois with unfocused Scarlett Johansson. The film as written by Josh Friedman attempts to follow the novel by James Ellroy, itself a strange riff on the Black Dahlia murder. What results is an over produced, over directed, under realized recreation of the 1940s complete with slicky costumes and very loud music by (surprisingly!) Mark Isham.



There are so many subplots filled with walk on characters that keeping the story understandable is almost impossible - certainly not worth an attempt to capsulize for a review. There are some terrific little performances by Fiona Shaw as the druggie mad woman whose role becomes significant only at film's end, Hilary Swank as the copycat Dahlia who dallies in cops and soldiers and lesbians (convincingly so), and Mia Kirshner who presence as the true Black Dahlia is shown only in black and white film clips that indeed focus the unwieldy script while she is on!



Odd to see actors with the credentials of this cast wandering around in la-la land seemingly looking for a script that makes sense. But it is a pretty period piece to look at despite the lack of reasonable storyline. Grady Harp, December 06

Blow
Drama New Line Home Video R
A briskly paced hybrid of "Boogie Nights" and "Goodfellas", "Blow" chronicles the three-decade rise and fall of George Jung (Johnny Depp), a normal American kid who makes a personal vow against poverty, builds a marijuana empire in the '60s, multiplies his fortune with the Colombian Medellín cocaine cartel, and blows it all with a series of police busts culminating in one final, long-term jail sentence. "Your dad's a loser," says this absentee father to his estranged but beloved daughter, and he's right: "Blow" is the story of a nice guy who made wrong choices all his life, almost single-handedly created the American cocaine trade, and got exactly what he deserved. As directed by Ted Demme, the film is vibrantly entertaining, painstakingly authentic... and utterly aimless in terms of overall purpose.
We can't sympathize with Jung's meteoric rise to wealth and the wild life, and Demme isn't suggesting that we should idolize a drug dealer. So what, exactly, is the point of "Blow"? Simply, it seems, to present Jung's story as the epitome of the coke-driven glory days, and to suggest, ever so subtly, that Jung isn't such a bad guy, after all. Anyone curious about his lifestyle will find this film amazing, and there's plenty of humor mixed with the constant threat of violence and paranoid anxiety. Demme has also populated the film with a fantastic supporting cast (although Penélope Cruz grows tiresome as Jung's hedonistic wife), and this is certainly a compelling look at the other side of "Traffic". Still, one wishes that "Blow" had a more viable reason for being; like a wild party, it leaves you with a hangover and a vague feeling of regret. "--Jeff Shannon"



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