For all the zombie movies released over the years, George A. Romero’s “Dead” series has always been held in high acclaim. Night of the Living Dead gave birth to this new genre, and horror staple, of the dead, returning to live seeking the living for sustenance. As grotesque as the subject matter is, it caught on and spawned dozens and dozens of sequels, rip-offs, and re-imaginings. To be fair, it’s hard to top the architect of anything. The stigma of sequels never living up to their predecessors has stuck around for a very long time, and only in the pas few years has that claim been seriously challenged with great films like Spider-Man 2, and Batman Begins. Romero did it twice after the original Night of the Living Dead with the masterpiece Dawn of the Dead and follow-up Day of the Dead.

When films like 28 Days Later and Shaun of the Dead bring new elements (zombies at full speed) and new genre-crossovers can the father of the zombie movie still shine in the world he helped create? Well, sort of.

Land of the Dead, the fourth film in the series, brings along everything we have come to expect from a Romero film. The gore factor is certainly there, especially still using old movie-making techniques and resisting the urge to go CGI-happy. Sure, CGI is a great complimentary element to be added into a film, but no one does gore like Romero and fake blood.

What is missing, however, is the character development which brought Dawn of the Dead to life in the late 1970’s. That film, which featured four survivors in a shopping mall, had plenty of time to introduce characters to us, show how they interact with each other, who-likes-who, who-doesn’t-like-who, and these were all elements of characterization that brought the film to life and separated it from the schlock. Land does an admirable job of showing us a variety of characters, but they’re all ones we’ve seen before. With characters like the leader looking to escape from his current job and move on, the opportunistic guy who’ll never be accepted, the streetwalker looking to do something more, and the maniacal ruler of the land. Add them together with some sloppy dialog and you have yourself a good zombie film, but one that doesn’t feel as complete or whole as Romero’s previous work.

The last surviving humans have taken refuge on a peninsula of sorts, bordered by water on two sides, and heavily fortified land on the other, these remnants of the human race feel safe. Overseen by the creepy Kaufman (Dennis Hopper), the rich live in an extravagant skyscraper with all the finest luxuries while the poor suffer on the streets turning tricks and calling for an uprising. Riley (Simon Baker from CBS’s The Guardian) sees his last night acquiring supplies turn deadly as a man takes his own life after being bitten by the zombies, how have taken over most of the country. Taking over the job of commanding Dead Reckoning, a massive tank-like vehicle built by Riley, is Cholo (John Leguizamo) who ends up stealing the vehicle and holding the city ransom. On the other end of the spectrum is the zombie element who are “led” by a service station attendant who appears to be able to communicate with the mindless drones shuffling about. He brings them to the fortified city in hopes of a fresh, warm meal.

While I’ll buy the stupid human tricks that still prevail even at times of adversity, I simply cannot fully grasp the change in the zombie nomenclature by having them communicate, learn to shoot guns, and coordinate a massive attack. We’ve seen the fast zombies of 28 Days Later, and while those in Land of the Dead remain at half-speed, the points mentioned above just don’t work for me. I remember almost wanting to laugh out loud at the grunts and such that would pass off as a zombie language. This, coupled with the happy, sunshine-time ending, rubbed me the wrong way. It wasn’t anywhere near as bad as The Matrix Revolutions revolting ending, but it certainly didn’t feel as though a man content with killing off main character after main character in his movies had directed this one.

Overall I thought Land of the Dead was a well constructed zombie movie with almost none of the spark that made Romero famous. The nods to his earlier works are funny, and the script has a certain amount of humor to it but the changing of the zombie dynamics and the film’s ending leave it slightly above average when it had a chance to be truly great.

When it comes to music, the U.S. is the hardest market for an international artist to break in to. American’s have very specific tastes to when it comes to their favorite artists. Many international bands have tried to crack the US market, with some success (Savage Garden, Celine Dion, Abba, Norah Jones, Flogging Molly, etc.). However, there have been many worthy bands that always seem to fall under the radar. One of the best bands to never make it big in the mainstream is an Acid Jazz/Funk group named Jamiroquai.

Jamiroquai, headed by front man Jar Kay, made a minor ruckus in 1997 with the amazing music video to “Virtual Insanity“; from the album Traveling Without Moving. A type of video that the MTV generation had never experienced before, “Virtual Insanity“; gave Jamiroquai their shot at the U.S. market. As much as everyone loved the video, record sales didn’t follow suit, and Traveling Without Moving sank into the overstock bins at record stores across the country. In 1999, Jay Kay tried again with Synkronized. The debut single, “Canned Heat,”; although a good club song, had a somewhat risqué music video and didn’t get the TV airtime the group had hoped for. Their third attempt, in 2001, was with the single “little L“; from the album A Funk Odyssey. The record was somewhat of a departure from their normal Acid Jazz genre, and took on a more techno mask.  Even with an MTV friendly music video, and Sony backing them with a barrage of advertising, Jamiroquai once again fell short in the United States.

Now, with their sixth release, Jamiroquai has decided to back off in the U.S., and focus more on their established market: the rest of the world. This time around, the States won’t see the album until August, and there are no currently scheduled tour dates. However, that doesn’t mean there aren’t any fans of Jamiroquai in the U.S. The Jamiroquai Official Forum (http://bb.jamiroquai.com) is flooded with fans in the begging for a concurrent U.S. release date and tour. Unfortunately, these fans are in a vast minority, as Jamiroquai hasn’t toured in North America since 2001. According to the site, there are no plans to schedule a U.S. tour, as they feel that any booked venues would grossly undersell, and produce a loss to both the band and their label.

The album itself, called Dynamite, is quite an amazing LP. It is a culmination of all five previous albums, as can be seen in many of their tracks. The first single, “Feels Like It Should“;, is very reminiscent of their Synkronized album. This track is easily the most addicting song on the album, much in the same fashion that “Love Foolosophy“; was on Funk Odyssey.  The track “Seven Days in Sunny June“; represents their earlier days, where synthesizers and digital sounds took a backseat to the natural beats, piano, and guitar rhythms that were abundant in “Return of the Space Cowboy“;.

The entire album has a great flow, as all the tracks seem to be where they should be; and blend together well to produce an album you immediately want to restart and experience again. When I reached the last track and realized it was over, I simply had to go back to track one and listen to it all over again.

Unfortunately, Dynamite won’t be officially available in the States until August, but that doesn’t mean you can’t import it, or go to a record store that will make international orders and get it, which I highly recommend. You’ll be glad you did, and maybe if enough of us do so, we can make a difference in the hard-to-crack U.S. Market, and one day bring the band back into the mainstream.

Comic book movies are a tough nut to crack. On one hand, you need to keep enough of the graphic novels core elements, story, and characters intact to appease the die-hard fans. On the other you need to make the movie available to the mass market so Joe Somebody is intrigued by a franchise he might never have heard about before.

Previous efforts to adapt comic books to the big screen have taken a sharp upturn in quality over the past few years. The X-Men series did everything right, including picture perfect casting in most cases, Spider-Man was willfully and colorfully brought to life by fan-favorite director Sam Raimi, and even minor characters like Blade have transferred to the big screen with huge success.

Batman Begins trumps them all, in this editor’s opinion, when it comes to staying faithful to the source material and bringing in a mass audience. The Dark Knight’s origins are so meticulously crafted by director Christopher Nolan and screenwriter David S. Goyer that you completely lose yourself in the story and never realize that 137 minutes have passed until a giant smile comes across your face and the credits begin to role.

Batman Begins starts with Bruce Wayne (Christian Bale) incarcerated overseas after leaving a decaying Gotham City. Organized crime, petty criminals, and police corruption lurk along the city streets (which uses Chicago, IL as a double). Wayne begins training under the tutelage of The League of Shadows and Ra’s Al Ghul, a man bent on saving the world, by any means necessary. Wayne eventually returns to Gotham, and through a series of events takes on the persona of Batman, a crime-fighter without any special powers, but a deep, undying need for vengeance and justice in the turbulent city.

Really there’s so much to say about the plot, but for the sake of keeping this review as spoiler free as possible, I’ll hold off on detailing anything else, but all you need to know is this is, by far, the best Batman movie ever created.

The success of the movie stems from the wonderful acting choices. Christian Bale is Bruce Wayne. The fan favorite for the job sinks into the role marvelously and brings the Batman and his playboy billionaire alter-ego to life in grand fashion. Michael Caine as Alfred is also an excellent bit of casting. Every member of the cast pulls their respective parts above and beyond what we’ve come to expect from a comic book film and creates memorable characters that, even with only a few lines in the script, can be fleshed out.

Besides Bale, two of my personal favorites are Cillian Murphy as Dr. Jonathan Crane/Scarecrow and Gary Oldman as Sgt. James Gordon.

Batman Begins is a reboot for the series after two good films, Batman and Batman: Returns, one passable movie, Batman: Forever and one atrociously bad one, Batman & Robin. The story doesn’t focus on one central nemesis for the winged-one to tackle, but, instead, focuses on the internal conflict within Bruce Wayne wanting to seek vengeance for his parents, but being unable to do so. Bale pulls this off with flying colors and is easily the best actor to don the cowl after Michael Keaton’s “okay” performances, Val Kilmer’s forgettable one, and George Clooney’s “it’s better we don’t talk about” tour of duty.

With so much going for the film, I was a bit skeptical if it could live up to the lofty expectations I had for it. Batman has long been my favorite comic book character and after Batman & Robin I don’t think I could take anymore rubber nipples or Bat-AmEx jokes. Luckily, Begins is a dark, serious film with only a few fleeting one-liners provided by Oldman and Caine to boot. Everything else is deathly series, as it should be, with the darker tone provided the central theme of fear.

Fear is the tool used most by Batman, not high-powered guns, or other gadgets, the Dark Knight in Batman Begins revolves around instilling fear into the criminals to keep them in line. It seems only right that the first baddie he would face would be The Scarecrow with his hallucinogen powder that provides for some truly frightening visuals (maggots crawling out of his face, Batman appearing deformed or with piercing red eyes). This isn’t clown-shoes Batman as we saw in the last film, this is the way the character was meant to be portrayed.

A review of the film couldn’t be complete without at least a mention of the new Batmobile which, if I may put it bluntly, kicks so many flavors of ass it’s unprecedented. The thing is just amazing to watch on screen and the chase mid-way through is pure-popcorn action personified by a car and the rooftops of a city.

Batman Begins is what Tim Burton’s Batman should have been in 1989, a movie that sets up the character the way the die-hard fans and John Q. Public would have liked. The Dark Knight’s origin is completely explained, several villains make their first appearances, there’s action, there’s adventure, suspense, horror, just about everything that makes an excellent movie all contained into this 137 minute masterpiece.

For those with doubts still, stow them, Batman Begins is the best, and most faithful, comic book adaptation ever, and blows every other movie you would have seen this year out of the water. With a nod to the next villain at the end and the principle cast already signed on for sequels, the future looks bright for the rebirth of this premiere franchise, and no one’s happier about that than me.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith director Doug Liman knows his action, and after the amazing car chase scene in The Bourne Identity and the action here, the man certainly is the one to hire when it comes to pulling off some bitchin’ sequences. Unfortunately, Mr. and Mrs. Smith, while being high on humor and explosions, fails a bit in the story department only to be reprieved by the sheer charismatic chemistry of the film’s two stars, Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt.

Pitt stars as John Smith, and Jolie as Jane, two secret agent/mercenaries working for competing organizations. The key is, neither of them knows each other is such an agent until about mid-way through the film. That’s where things really start to pick up, with both trying to “1-up” each other in a series of failed attempts to kill each other. The trailers pretty much give away most of the film’s plot, and the “twist” that is suppose to make the audience really think about what is going on is poorly written, but when houses explode and hot women thrown knives, you can’t help but be entertained.

Joining the tabloid-two-some is Vince Vaughn as Eddie, John’s partner who still lives with his mother, and The OC‘s Adam Brody as a secret agent in training who serves as the film’s MacGuffin. There are other minor players, such as Jane’s faceless boss, whom we never get to see and an all-female secret agent crew who appear for about 15 seconds total before their forgotten. No, this film is about Jolie and Pitt’s characters and their battle with each other until they finally realize they do love each other and make-up.

It’s also best that the movie doesn’t take itself too seriously, as it would be come somewhat of a chore to watch. From the very onset Liman and screenwriter Simon Kinberg aim for a action/comedy approach with the opening scenes taking place at a relational therapist who is interviewing John and Jane off-camera. Their answers right away spark laughs from the audience and encouraged me that this was going to be a good time, and a good time it was.

Nearly the first half of the film has the audience knowing who each of the main characters really, but not John and Jane. After a rendezvous goes bad in the desert both of the principles begin to suspect each other until their secret is finally revealed. As you’ve seen in the film’s advertising, and in the trailers, there’s lots of gun play, explosions, knives, elevator accidents, etc. Bring the girlfriend for the comedy and Brad Pitt, stay for Jolie and the guns.

Liman’s handling of the action scenes is superb in that you actually feel as though you are there. The shoot out in a minivan being chased by three bulletproof BMW’s is the highlight of the film as John and Jane squabble with each other while exchanging bullets with their pursuers. Mr. and Mrs. Smith‘s climax in a department store will also bring smiles to the audiences face with pure Bond-like escapes from barrages of bullets.

Even with the film’s humor it’s hard to suspend your disbelief enough to accept the fact that anything in this two hour movie is plausible. The story itself almost takes a backseat for a good portion of the film as the second act seems to be a set of escapes by John and Jane from each other with even more stuff blowing up around them. There’s no characterization, no substance to anyone on screen other than “these two shouldn’t like each other, now they’ll fight to the death.”

As mentioned before, Jolie and Pitt click very, very well, even amidst tabloid reports of their romance and rumors of a very turbulent production cycle for the film (including the shooting of three endings). Luckily, none of the off-camera drama makes its way into the film, instead the audience is treated to two very capable actors who gel together very, very nicely. It’s a wonder why they hadn’t been teamed up before.

Mr. and Mrs. Smith is an above average movie. While the dumbness of the plot and non-existent, lame-brain story may turn off a few, the promise of big guns, lots of fire, and Miss Jolie in a bra will pack the house full. A smart film? No. Fun? Hell, yes.

The Longest Yard, a remake of a 1974 film of the same name, may not have the same mainstream and broad appeal that last week’s Revenge of the Sith had, but after viewing it, I can honestly say I enjoyed it much, much more than the final chapter in the Star Wars trilogy.

The film centers on Paul Crewe (Adam Sandler), a former pro-football player who was kicked out of the league during a point-shaving scandal that left him drinking and with an up-tight girlfriend (Courtney Cox). After taken her Bentley for a drunken chase, Crewe is arrested and sent to prison, although life on the inside begins to mirror life on the outside.

Warden Hazen (James Cromwell) has pulled a few strings to get Crewe in his prison. Hazen believes that Crewe can give his team of guards a few lessons before the season starts. Paul recommends playing against a team of prisoners to boost confidence, but a series of events puts the slapped together team with an advantage. From there some good-old-fashioned American violence takes place, and the audience couldn’t be any happier.

The casting of Chris Rock and Adam Sandler along side each other seems like pure genius on paper, and for the most part, works very well on screen. The fact of the matter is, Sandler and Rock don’t share a huge amount of screen time, but when they do, some of the film’s best one-liners are delivered. In order to give the appearance of a capable football team, the production staff hired on former pro-wrestlers including Stone Cold Steve Austin and Goldberg. I guess all those years of throwing punches and pretending to be hurt paid off.

The rest of the cast is a collection of one-joke wonders, but in a film such as this, and with a football team as big as it is, each one of them gets a moment to shine. We have the big, dumb player who can hit hard, Cheeseburger Eddy (Terry Crews) who, amazingly, can pull various McDonald’s menu items from his clothing, Nelly as the nearly-unstoppable running back Earl Megget, as well as former NFL star Michael Irvin once again donning number 88. Finally, and most disturbingly, the team of inmates is cheered on by a group of transvestite cheerleaders headed up by a very out-of-work Tracy Morgan.

The film’s jokes seem to hit 90% of the time and while most of them are coming from the gutter, you wouldn’t expect anything more or less from a paint-by-numbers Adam Sandler picture, albeit one of the best ones. Sure, Sandler has shown that he can act in movies like The Wedding Singer, Spanglish, and Punch Drunk Love, but he still knows what his core fans want, and that’s poop jokes and swearing.

Chris Rock, appearing in his second movie of the weekend (he’s also in Madagascar) plays his usual self, a wise-cracking, repressed black-man in a white-man’s world, and it’s just as funny as ever.

I can’t honestly say how close the film is to the original, having never seen it, but Burt Reynolds’ inclusion in the movie is icing on the cake to an already stacked cast the performs more than adequately.

The Longest Yard maintains is pacing throughout the picture, and while the cinematography and direction are basic, its more than enough to get the job done. You don’t need fancy CG effects to see a guy get flattened. While you are never emotionally attached to any of the characters, a turning point in the middle of the movie has you pumped up for the big game.

The film is extremely violent in its portrayal of the pigskin competition at the climax and, quite frankly, we wouldn’t have it any other way with a group of sadistic guards taking on those they continue to harass. Jumping kicks, guys crapping themselves from getting hit so hard (one of the better jokes in the movie as well), and Adam Sandler being Adam Sandler provide a fun experience for young and not-quite-too-old.

The Longest Yard isn’t quite up to par with Happy Gilmore as Sandler’s finest work, but it does top everything else including the passable Billy Madison, atrocious Little Nicky, and sub-par Waterboy. If you’re a Sandler fan, and are aching for him to return to his roots, although still show some grown as an actor, The Longest Yard is a touchdown.

Spoilers Contained Within…You Have Been Warned!

Let me just say that I’m not a big time Star Wars fan, or at least I’m not keyed into the huge mythology that has arisen since the original trilogy’s release in the late 70’s-early 80’s. I know who the characters are, who they’re suppose to be, who is who’s father; you know, the basics. So I’m going to be looking at Star Wars Episode III: Revenge of the Sith from a viewpoint of a casual Star Wars fan and a hobbyist movie critic. Get ready to send that hate mail.

Revenge of the Sith, for the unenlightened, is the culmination of the prequel trilogy started by George Lucas in 1999 with the massively disappointing, but highly profitable The Phantom Menace. The movie introduces us to a small Anakin Skywalker (Jack Lloyd) who drives in a treacherously long pod-race to win his freedom and attempt to become a Jedi Knight. We also are introduced to the fact that “The Force” is nothing more than some unique stuff inside your cells. The movie sets up the principles that would be further elaborated upon in Episode II Attack of the Clones such as Chancellor Palpatine (Ian McDiarmid) rising to power, Anakin (Hayden Christensen) and Padme (Natalie Portman) hooking up, and Obi-Wan (Ewan McGregor) taking on the leadership role with his new apprentice.

Episode III brings everything to a head. The Clone War is continuing, suspicions of the Chancellor continue, and the Jedi “have a bad feeling about this” entire situation, and its well-founded as they are nearly wiped out save for a lucky few thrown into exile. The film continues to build upon the rage inside Skywalker as he turns to the darkside and ends with the scene many have been waiting for, the creation of Darth Vader in the form we all know.

As a movie bridging the gap between the excellent Episode IV and the so-so Episode II, Revenge of the Sith does its job adequately. With the passing of twenty years, we can see how the Death Star would be created, Vader would become the powerful man he is in the latter episodes, and how his human side can still hold true in Return of the Jedi as he saves his son from the corrupt Emperor. For fan-boys Episode III is the fix they needed until the planned TV series begins production, but as a movie, RotS is an underwhelming affair.

The story itself, although sounding very interesting on paper, is actually pretty boring in execution. The first hour of the film is nothing more than political speeches and romantic melodrama sans the opening fight sequence and amazing visuals. When the audience settles down from the crash landing of a battlecruiser you wonder what happen to all the action. Lucas seems to cut so quickly between shots (sometimes no more than 20-30 seconds long) before he performs the trademark wipes that it’s really hard to grasp what is really going on sometimes. Even harder to understand is many of these events happen at the same time further throwing you off when you return to a scene minutes later at nearly the same exact time you cut away. These quick cuts even confuse Lucas’ script in more than a few points. Not until the culminating duel of Anakin and Obi-Wan does the movie really pick up, and that’s nearly the end.

The death of several key characters seems highly contrived. Mace Windu’s (Samuel L. Jackson) is wholly inconsistent with what we’ve seen the Jedi do in earlier movies. If Anakin can freefall through traffic and manage to save himself, even a handicapped Windu should be able to accomplish the same feat. Padme’s impending doom seems as though it was plotted over bagels on a Sunday morning with no real reason other than “she’s lost the will to live,” given. I’m sorry but that bit of shoddy storytelling just won’t fly with me, especially in such a high profile movie. Then there’s the time consistency between Padme telling Anakin she’s pregnant and actually having the babies which seems to only happen a few days apart from each other.

I’ve never considered George Lucas to be that “awesome” of a director so my expectations weren’t incredibly high for Revenge of the Sith in that aspect, so I can’t say I was disappointed. I had heard rumblings on how bad the dialog was, but I honestly didn’t hear too many bad lines. Christensen seems to have fit into the role a bit better this time and sanded away his wooden acting from Episode II. Overall the cast is put together well and gel nicely with each other but lacks the chemistry we saw between the original trilogy’s cast members.

The much publicized “creation” of Darth Vader in masked form is generally underwhelming as it’s a three minute affair of attaching prosthetic body parts and recreating the famous breathing sound along with James Earl Jones bombastic voice.

In continuing with underutilized and underdeveloped villains the hyped General Grievous is fun to watch but comical to hear when he actually decides to talk. Once he’s dispatched, along with the paycheck-collecting Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, you’ll wonder what place they ever served in the movie other than filler.

The film isn’t all bad though. From a visual stand point ILM has created the best looking movie I have ever seen. The opening space battle was just amazing with huge capital ships battling for the skies of the capital planet. Realistically you won’t find a better looking science fiction movie, digital or not. Yet, we’ve seen plenty of movies rest on the laurels of their imagery, and while Revenge of the Sith never does that, I got the felling that all the eye candy may be trying to distract you from the script.

After it was all said and done I left the theater feeling like nothing had just happened. It was almost like I sat for two and a half hours and didn’t really retain anything. It might be a combination of my lack of die-hard fanaticism and the creating of an average movie or from the fact that, being a prequel, there’s no mystery. What I do know is I had a much, much better time with Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy a few weeks ago than I did with Revenge of the Sith, but to each his own. Star Wars is a very high profile franchise and with the high expectations that were placed on Episode III, frankly I’m not surprised it failed to live up to the lineage set down by the original trilogy. If it means anything, each movie in the prequel trilogy has been better than the last, so here’s hoping the TV series can continue that trend and deliver us something a bit better produced, and more well-written.

In an age where $8000 can barely fill up your gas tank independent film maker Alex Ferrari has managed to create a short 20 minute film that rivals much of what Hollywood has produced this year. The film, bridging a gap between the mind-warping Memento and the gritty Saw, establishes a group of characters that are as intriguing as they are mysterious. Broken‘s only problem is that once the runtime is up you immediately want more only to find out that’s all there is…for now.

The story starts with a bang as Bonnie (Samantha Jane Polay) wakes up suddenly to a gunshot and finds a mysterious man sitting in her kitchen. He abducts her and the film proceeds from there. I don’t want to give too much away, but there are glimpses to a much bigger picture that would flesh out the main characters even more. The short runtime does limit the establishment of any of the background characters (such as the handful of guys and gals waiting for Bonnie to arrive after she is abducted). Ferrari’s story makes the viewer question what is really going on and just as we think we may have some idea, the credits begin to roll in the stylistic backwards crawl akin to David Fincher’s Se7en.

The entire film was produced for $8000, which is pretty damn impressive when box office bombs like Troy and Van Helsing cost upwards of $200 million and don’t offer any of the same rewards. One of the biggest cost cutting tips, as stated by the production team, was the filming of only one location. This setting, filmed in an actual Mental Health Hospital, is picture perfect complete with flickering lights, old pipes, and an atmosphere geared for a film such as this, Fincher would be pleased.

Being a nut for the unconventional camera angle, the cinematography impressed me the most. There’s something about placing a camera behind a carton of orange juice that makes me smile from ear to ear. Some of the scenes reminded me of the recently released Sin City and its graphic novel “framed” scenes with an extreme close-up in the foreground and a foreboding character in the back. The influence from some of Hollywood’s darker films is apparent, especially in the aforementioned setting for the film but it isn’t a copy by any means as Broken is injected with its own style.

The special effects, of which there are over 100, are also top notch for the most part. Some of them are very easy to pick out (such as the sparks from an impacting bullet) and others are subtle enough to the point where only the VFX wizards who constructed them would know. Even the movie’s weakest effects are better than you would expect based on the budget.

Alex Ferrari and producer Jorge F. Rodriguez have produced a film that brings independent filmmaking to a whole new level. Hacks like Uwe Boll can make one atrocious movie after another and single handedly destroy an entire genre, these two guys should be the one’s to watch in the future. If this is what these guys can do with $8000; I can only imagine what they could do with $60 million and a very much hope I get to see that one day.

For more info on Broken, including more screenshots and a trailer, visit the official site.

I’ve been waiting a long time to write this review, and I’m happy to report that if you stopped reading this now and wanted to know what I thought in a word, the answer would ultimately be: 42. All joking aside, The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy, directed by first-timer Garth Jennings, managed to come to the big screen with the wit and flavor the late Douglas Adams dreamed of when he penned the first draft of the script before his death. There are original elements within, and they seem to meld in well with the remaining portions of the script, but what we really came to see was dolphins, whales, and a hapless hero by the name of Arthur Dent. 

Hitchhiker’s Guide doesn’t feature everything in Adams’ book, but a good portion of the important parts are included. For the uneducated, the book (and movie) focuses on Arthur Dent, a survivor of Earth, which was destroyed to make way for a hyperspace express route. Dent is saved by his friend Ford Prefect and eventually meets up with president of the galaxy Zaphod Beeblebrox and Trillian, a woman whom he had met previously. From there the book and movie stray off into different paths, but it all ends in relatively the same way and casual fans of the series will not be disappointed.

Those that will be disappointed are the die-hard Adams purists who see this movie as a bastardization of the book’s setting, characters, and humor. Although those who didn’t read articles leading up to the film’s premiere will be shocked to find out that most of the changes were made by Adams himself before his death, including the new character Humma Kavula (John Malkovich). And even those who are disappointed will still find something to laugh at, even if the humor, and the movie itself, seem disjointed in the grander scheme of things.

Most reviews of the film will be a comparison of what is there and what isn’t there when compared to the book, BBC radio series, or mini released in the early 1980’s. With each passing generation, Adams seemed to make many changes to his work, and while they never tampered with the story in general, they were better regarded than the gutting the Star Wars trilogy went through at the hands of “director” George Lucas. Viewers of Hitchhiker’s will be in three separate groups, casual fans who are delighted the film finally made it to the big screen, die-hard fans, and those that simply don’t get it.

Truth be told, the movie isn’t as cohesive and fluid as many sci-fi narratives making their way to the big- and small-screens these days. The deep storytelling of Battlestar Galactica or expansive universe of Star Trek, this is not, but what it is outshines nearly every comedy put out this year by a major studio and has a built in audience capable of making it a hit in more than one medium.

Generally the parts are well cast with Martin Freeman filling out the role of Arthur Dent spectacularly. Originally the casting of Mos Def as Ford was seen as a ballsy move, but the character’s wit and charm is portrayed accurately by the rapper-turned-actor. Outshining them all, however, is Sam Rockwell as Zaphod who steals every scene he’s in with is over-the-top dumbness and swagger and disregard for everything. From him stealing the Heart of Gold to having his brain recharged with lemons, Rockwell is the number one reason to see the film. Rounding out the main cast is Zooey Deschanelas the beautiful Trillian and Alan Rickman as the chronically depressed Marvin whose dead-pan delivery brings the paranoid android to life in ways we would have never thought possible 20 years ago.

Those that read the book when they were in high school a decade ago were hand in hand with a new audience just recently introduced to the work of Adams, who, sadly, couldn’t see this work come to fruition. The movie is essentially critic proof with each and every viewer making their own decisions based on the warm, fuzzy feeling the source material gives us. Like it or not, Hitchhiker’s has finally made its way to the big screen, so stick out a thumb, watch out for mice, discover the ultimate answer, and hitch a ride.