FOX, and parent News Corp., has been known to drop the ball from time to time. OJ Simpson’s book deal, the marketing and demise of Arrested Development, but one of the biggest problems they’ve faced is properly marketing, supporting, and releasing products from Mike Judge. His first film, Office Space, the very definition of cult classic was shunned theatrically but found new life on home video and DVD, spawning some of the most quotable lines of all time. His animated series, King of the Hill, was picked up at the very last minute last season leading to a shortened and late-starting season, and, over the last year, he’s seen his latest film, Idiocracy, go from collecting dust on a shelve to being unceremoniously released on DVD with a bare-bones package and no marketing.

I shouldn’t be much of a surprise that the movie was delayed, screened, delayed again, and then totally dropped from even a limited theatrical release, but there’s some obvious reason. First off, Hollywood likes movies in which they can make trailers for; Idiocracy is not one of those movies. The industry also likes movies which don’t step on the toes of companies who also fund other divisions of the same company. Carl’s Jr., Starbucks, Fuddruckers, and Costco are lampooned so badly in this satirical piece that executives must have just been waiting to sue. Starbucks gets the worst of it, turning the coffee shop into sex shop.

The movie focuses on Joe Bauers (Luke Wilson), an Army librarian and the epitome of average. He’s recruited into a secret Army experiment to freeze a human for one year, hopefully one day saving our best soldiers for wars that haven’t begun yet. Unfortunately, things don’t go as planned, and the capsules that Bauers and a prostitute named Rita (Maya Rudolph), are incased in are forgotten about. The base is destroyed and replaced with a Fuddruckers, and the world changes.

As the opening narrative explains, those with the high IQs plan their family lives much more in-depth than the white trash, low-IQ residents of American, who spreads his idiot seed all over turning the American population into monster truck watching, beer swilling, ball-cracking-loving imbeciles throwing natural selection out the window. In the year 2505, the world is stupid, Costco is as large as a medium-sized state, and buildings are duct taped together, and it’s hilarious.

The beauty of Judge’s work on the story is the biting satire of a future, owned by corporations where ads appear everywhere (including your pajamas), similar to the office environment in Office Space, the United States 500 years in the future is a reflection on current times (in this case, two years ago because of the numerous delays in the film’s release). The sight gags are more prevalent than in any of the director’s previous work, but they all work while poking fun at a consumer driven America reliant on advertising and buzzwords to get through the day.

This is by no means a cinematic masterpiece, but the acting, director, special effects, and story all wrap up into another cult classic notch on Judge’s belt, who routinely produces quality comedy in either animated or live action form. While 20^th Century FOX may have handled the film like the plague, there’s nothing to fear here. There’s a very polarized opinion on the film to those who get it, and don’t get it. Those who understand the satire involved, including being fascinated with a show completely focused on one man getting kicked repeatedly in the balls, will find an enjoyable film biting in its wit and capitalizing on Judge’s talents. Those who don’t understand may find easier comedic faire in simply punching a friend in the junk.

Idiocracy is now available on DVD, do yourself a favor and at least rent the film and show FOX how badly they messed this one up.

Black Christmas, a remake of a 1974 film of the same name, is everything you would expect from the modern Hollywood, a paint-by-numbers horror film that does nothing to further the genre, and in some respects, is so amateurish it may not even quality for credit in a upper-division college course.

There’s so much wrong with this film and it doesn’t even dare to appease the audience by including the three horror staples we’ve all come to know and love: gratuitous nudity, creative deaths, and genuine scares. The only nude scene we get is a girl showering from behind, the deaths are all the same, so much in which they could have used the same death scene over and over again and you wouldn’t even notice, and the scares are all terminally forced.

Even writer/director Glen Morgan’s attempt at a twist is over shadowed by his penance for shooting people from the ankle down and almost blatant attempt to make you feel as though you know who the killer’s sister is. By the time he throws her image on the screen after a flashback you know it can’t be that obvious, and you aren’t that stupid. The prolonged ending to kill off a few more people in non-inventive ways is just a ten minute segment tacked on to a film that’s already 90 minutes too long.

The cast, composed of mostly C-list catty celebrities who can easily pull off being a spoiled sorority girl merely serves as canon fodder as the deaths pile up. Of course, in typical Hollywood don’t-go-in-there-stupid-thinking half of the deaths could have been avoided if the characters had any intelligence beyond painting fingernails and calling each other a bitch. The most notable cast member being Michelle Trachtenberg, who now appears doomed to star in a subpar movie in every single genre possible, but you’ll be hard pressed to put face to name during the end credits.

A few names you will remember are the aforementioned Miller and James Wong who served as members of the crew for the excellent, and genre-defying, Final Destination series, but it seems each has fallen on hard times and will put anything out for any easy few million.

So, in the end, Black Christmas is another Hollywood remake that doesn’t turn out so well. You’ll be hard pressed to find anything you’d like in this entire film, because you’ve seen it all done before, and sometimes better. One can only hope that studio big wigs get a clue, but we all know they won’t as long as there’s more movies from the 60’s, 70’s, and 80’s that people barely remember, they’ll be ready to green-light muck like this. 

I’m a huge James Bond fan, and I only know one other person who can give me a run for my money when it comes to geeking out and turning into a total fanboy when it comes to 007. I also consider Pierce Brosnan to be perfectly suited for the role of James Bond, he embodied the role during his tour of duty by providing the action we needed, the quips we craved, and wooing the women we wished we could have. While the series itself succumbed to self-parody and more and more outlandish plots and gadgets, the character was still intact for the most part.

When Casino Royale was first announced (sans Brosnan) you can expect my reservations. The series was rebooting, a new James Bond was being brought in, and the entire series itself was being refreshed to something many in the younger generation were unfamiliar with. There’s no Q, there’s no Moneypenny, but there is the same M? Imagine the confusion of younger fans coming off of the CGI-laced Die Another Day into the more grounded, nearly-gadget-less Royale.

All those fears are unfounded, however, as Casino Royale proves to be one of the, if not the, best James Bond film yet with a perfectly cast lead, a great supporting line-up, interesting story, twists, turns, cars, women, guns, and explosions, James Bond returns to the big screen with a huge bang focusing in on the character and his beginnings rather than invisible cars and laser watches.

A lot needs to be said for Daniel Craig who steps into the role as the sixth actor to play the title character. Craig brings everything to the role and gives the audience more than we could expect. His cocky, arrogant beginnings are believably portrayed and his hardened, deep eyes give the impression of a cold-blooded killer but also the emotion we know Bond still relies on early in his career. Enough speculation and critical analysis of the actor seems totally unwarranted and those who adamantly spoke out against him in the beginning are dining on a feast of crow right now as Craig IS James Bond. I won’t go so far as to say he is better than Sean Connery in the role, as I’ll need several more viewings of Casino Royale and it subsequent sequels to see the range of the character, but based solely on Royale, Craig easily passes Roger Moore, Timothy Dalton, Brosnan, and George Lazenby.

The movie itself, as previously mentioned, focuses in on the beginnings of 007 and his career at MI6. From the beginning of the film you can see the emotionally driven, arrogant son of a bitch who opposes authority and seems to work for himself. As the movie ends, and Craig delivers the catch phrase we’ve all been longing to hear for 2 hours and 24 minutes you can see a change in the character as all that he has known has fallen apart around him, his emotional attachments severed, and his sense of duty heightened. The movie grounds itself more in reality (for the most part) with out any of the outlandish (and totally unbelievable) gadgets that cropped up in the ladder installments of the series. The gadgets that you do find here are entirely possibly in the real world, as is the rest of the film.

Everything about the film was in question two years ago and now, 24 months later, the only question we have is how long until we get to see 007 on the big screen again. Casino Royale is good, scary good, so good in fact that after the credits began to roll with the familiar theme in the background all I could think about was if there was another showtime tonight and how do I get tickets.

With so many excellent parts to the film it’s nearly impossible to touch on them all, but Casino Royale is a film that needs to be experienced by both fans and non-fans of the franchise. Thinking of it as an introduction to the spy movie genre or an extension of a 40 year franchise, either way Casino Royale ranks as one of the best times you will have at the movies and easily the best film of 2006.

See it once, then see it again. His name is Bond, James Bond, and he’s back and better than ever.

Most sequels or sequels of sequels tend to lose some of the spice that made the original movie worthy of having a sequel in the first place. There are franchises which buck this trend and those that follow a rollercoaster ride of mediocrity and glory as the series progresses through the years. The Saw series is a good example of the ladder with both the original and first sequel building up and progressively getting better with more inventive deaths, clever schemes, and twist endings that really made you think in the end. Saw III, the latest in the annual Halloween series, manages to hold the bar firmly in place for the series, but doesn’t raise it any particular way for the franchise or the genre.

Saw III picks up almost immediately after the events of Saw II, and as an added bit of closure we’re treated to how the second (and first) movies really ended by the screenwriters desire to tie up some loose ends. Granted they do leave a few questions, but we ultimately figure out what happened to Adam (the photographer from the first film) and Detective Matthews (who was last seen chained in a very familiar looking bathroom). Luckily for us the events that took place in the previous film are not only touched upon, they are a big component of the overall movie’s plot. Jigsaw (Tobin Bell) is still very much near death and Amanda (Shawnee Smith) is still working as his protégé in continuing on his work.

Unlike the first two movies the main “conflict” with a character or characters being put in an impossible situation (two men trapped in a bathroom, a group of people in a locked down house infected with a virus) plays second fiddle to Jigsaw himself and his final elaborate games to test the will of a person. I’ll be honest and say that I was surprised by the movie’s final revelation about who each of these people was and who was being tested for what. While the twist is no where near as good as the original, or as out-of-the-blue as the second film, it sits well with the viewer as you pick up bits and pieces along the way. We almost called part of the ending about half way through the film, but the ultimate climax and finale were a surprise.

The beauty of this series is it knows what it is, it knows the genre, and it knows who its fans are and it doesn’t bend over backwards to appease those who are not part of its core audience. The filmmakers at Twisted Pictures and Lionsgate know that male teenagers and early twentysomethings will turn out in droves for a film like this around Halloween and are prepared for the most obscene and grotesque display they can get a ticket for. These movies are cheap to produce, very cleverly marketed, and appease a devoted fan base.

Saw III lacks the horror aspect of most of the films in the genre in which the purpose is not to scare you, you won’t find any jump-out-of-your-seat moments here, but what you will find are plenty of reasons to cringe at the screen as decaying pigs become liquid, bone meets skull, and explosives meeting the human body. Saw III handles all three of the previous statements wonderfully and delivers a rewarding experience.

The second sequel, however, may not be as accessible as the first, or even second, films in the series for new viewers to be introduced. With so many flashbacks to the previous two movies, and the events leading up to them, and after them, this is definitely a more fan oriented film geared towards bringing closure and setting up the next sequel. How the will pull off nearly-greenlit Saw IV is anyone’s guess after the finale of this installment, but I can honestly saw I’ll be in line, ticket in hand, next year at this very same time.

The fan service film Lovecracked! The Movie, a play on words featuring the works of H.P. Lovecraft is representative if what can happen when you get a lot of people together to try and meld together short stories and “inspired by” takes on the works of a particular author and turn them into a semi-successful full length film. I say “semi-successful” because there are parts of Lovecracked! which really stand out as something extraordinary and others that, well, not so much.

The film starts out presented its way of linking all these stories together (loosely). We are witness to the filming of a faux TV show focusing on H.P. Lovecraft, his works, who he was, and what he was about. In between segments of the show, which has the roving reporter querying people such as oblivious businessmen and a snowman, we are sometimes treated to interpretations of Lovecraft’s work. Each segment is done by a different director and a different cast which gives the overall film a sense of freshness as things will change nearly a dozen times in Lovecracked!’s 87 minute runtime and if you don’t enjoy a particular segment, a new one is on tap.

Stand out bits include “The Statement of Randolph Carter” which seems like the most direct interpretation of a Lovecraft short story and “Remain” which brings back an old school Tool music video like feel as well as possessing the film’s greatest special effects in the stop motion animation.

Passable segments include the semi-cliché “Witch’s Spring” where a femme fatal seduces a young man only to harvest his heart and soul and “BugBoy” which comes up short in the story department but shines in its excellent special effects.

The rest of the segments, including the soft-core porn “Re-Penetrator” come up decidedly short in more ways than one. “The History of the Lurkers” is a dialog-devoid chasm of dull which doesn’t seem to end as soon as it should. The aforementioned “Re-Penetrator” is gratuitous for the sake of being gratuitous and leaving out all the humor one would expect given its premise and start.

A lot of the films jokes feel forced and recycled from other works (such as the TV show host appearing, sans-pants, in the middle of a segment). There are times when you feel yourself laughing out loud, but after a well done title introduction the jokes are few and far between for what you feel is a horror/comedy in the same vein of Troma’s work (whose co-founder Lloyd Kaufman is featured in the film).

Fans of Lovecraft may be mixed on where they stand after viewing the film. Several of the segments seem to perfectly channel the aura of Lovecraft’s work while others may only bare a passing resemblance to the original written material, or reference it in name only. With a mixed bag of good and bad bits chained together with a semi-funny, semi-original on-going bit Lovecracked! is an average endeavor.

Jackass: Number Two lives up to everything we would expect after the first time and a successful TV show. The sequel is bigger and certainly pushes the limits of what we might consider good taste, but its all for a laugh, so, in the end, it works.

Like the original film, Number Two is book ended by some scripted sequences: a running of the bulls and a musical number with plenty of bodily injury thrown in for good measure. Between those we are treated to some of the most cringe inducing stunts even printed on celluloid. So many of the bits hit that it becomes almost impossible to hear the dialog spoken before and after jokes because the theater is uproariously applauding or laughing too loud. Not that this is a bad thing.

Truth be told, Number Two, much like the first time, is best seen with a large group of friends in a packed theater. Half of the experience is the atmosphere created by hundreds of jackass fans all sharing sympathy pains or laughing hysterically at the jokes. Even the dreaded “Junior High Explosion” that seems to ruin the movie-going experience week after week is kept in check (partly because of the film’s R-rating and because being noisy is part of the game).

Johnny Knoxville and the guys have upped the ante on themselves with the second installment in the series with some very creative pranks and some harking back to the old school roots of the series. Standouts include the Terrorist Cab Ride near the end of the film where one of the crew is dressed up to look Middle Eastern and asks to go to the airport spouting anti-American propaganda. Little does he know that the cabbie is, in fact, director Jay Chandrasekhar. Chandrasekhar stops the cab in a parking lot and pulls a gun causing laughter abounds from those in on the joke and chilling fear from those not.

Old school send-ups include fun with shopping carts, mini-bikes, and various other objects attached to what appear to be oxygen tanks and let loose off of a ramp into a lake. Every skit in the film seems to click even the most disgusting ones like director/producer Spike Jonze walking around in make up pretending to be an elderly woman whose robe keeps on opening up.

Jackass: Number Two successfully continues the long-concluded MTV franchise on the big screen. The film represents some of the grossest moments you’ll ever see in a film, but it also provides some of the biggest laughs of the year. It certainly won’t win any awards, but its definitely a film to see, providing you liked the series and can stand to see grown men vomiting uncontrollably.

If anyone is taking notes on how to do write, direct, and base a movie around a singular actors abilities, let Nacho Libre be the poster child and the butt of all jokes. In fact, it might be the only joke that is funny concerning this dreadfully unfunny affair that neither strikes a cord with Napoleon Dynamite fans or those who have an ounce of humor in their bodies. Nacho Libre is directly at a younger, more pure audience with its PG rating and flatulent humor, but no one is laughing at the film’s tired, reused jokes and disjointed direction.

The star of the film is Jack Black who, like Chris Farley before him, is falling into the pitfall of having movies writing specifically around him because he’s overweight, likes physical comedy, and can get a laugh by merely looking at someone funny. This worked out well in School of Rock, not so much in Nacho Libre. Sans for a breakdown moment channeling his inner Tenacious D, there just isn’t anything that makes you want to play money to see a fat guy wrestle. Millions of Americans do this already, but is far cheaper on TV and just as humorless.

The story revolves around Black’s character of Nacho; a friar at a orphanage in Mexico who has a love for wrestling and begins moonlighting in a Mexican underground amateur league with is local, skinny cohort Esqueleto (Héctor Jiménez). There’s also a love interest thrown into the mix (which seems odd considering she’s a nun) and the standard sports movie devices of quitting, being defeated, and coming back to the ring for one last fight to triumph are once again present and overused. Centering the story about a friar who moonlights as a wrestler is daring and different, but the execution is marred by the pain script.

Having never seen director Jared Hess’ first film I can’t comment on whether or not the script follows the same disjointed, almost sketch like makeup of Nacho Libre, but this film is in utter disarray all the way through. The thin story is only amplified by the fact that each of the day’s events or obstacles seem like a way to get Black to flail around or say something in a high-pitched voice. There’s a certain amount of tongue-in-cheek humor to it all, but it doesn’t go over the edge to make fun of itself, instead stays firmly planted in the middle of the road between mediocrity and boredom.

For being a comedy there isn’t much to laugh about as Nacho seems poised to run around without a shirt and fart. I’m not going to say that this wouldn’t normally be funny, but any film that supports these two comedic devices also throws us in some genuinely funny situations in which to support them, Libre gives us one character’s love for corn.

I suppose the direction and style of the film is an acquired taste by those who found Napoleon Dynamite incredibly funny, but as a movie, standing on its own two feet, Nacho Libre is a dreadful experience that shouldn’t be wished upon anyone. As with most comedies, the funniest bits are in the trailer, and even they aren’t that resounding in their ability to get you to at least chuckle a little bit.

Beware of Nacho, and stay away.

The Da Vinci Code is by no means an instant classic of a novel, but it is an engaging thriller filled with twists, turns, and enough whodunits to really make you think and turn the page over and over again. After all, that’s what makes a really good book. But what makes a really good movie or better yet, a really good book to movie translation?

The Da Vinci Code as a movie is a passable affair that brings some of the book’s mystery to the big screen and manages to successfully interpret Dan Brown’s novel into something more visual and easier to grasp on to. The novel has a great advantage over the movie simply because there’s much more time and real estate devoted to the characters that a two and a half hour movie cannot afford unless your name is Peter Jackson and the book contains elves and talking trees.

With all the controversy surrounding the book’s basic plot line, Sony couldn’t have paid for any better advertising and weekend box office returns certainly show this, but even with the free marketing, an all star cast headed by Tom Hanks, and an Oscar winning director The Da Vinci Code still feels somewhat odd when viewing it. Repeat viewings may solve this uncanny feeling, but after the initial run through, you can’t help but wonder why the movie feels so empty in the end.

Most adaptations that I’ve previously seen, whether it be comic book or novel, have one thing in common, I read the book before seeing the film, and in those cases everything seemed to work out well as the visual style of your imagination was filled in by the director’s interpretation. The Da Vinci Code is different in the way the movie makes you feel when viewing it. I read the book a full year before seeing the movie, so the material was still pretty fresh in there, but you can’t help but feel as though reading the book may dumb down the movie because you know all the plot points and the sense of thrill you usually experience from movies in this genre is severely crippled.

The cast, for the most part, does a great job of bringing the characters to life and infusing them with faces, mannerisms, and personalities that may only be hinted at in the book. For examples, Inspector Fache (Jean Reno) comes off more likable and competent in the movie than in the book whereas Robert Langdon (Tom Hanks) seems to be an unmistakable genius in the movie but struggled a bit more with conclusions in the book. Silas (Paul Bettany) is as menacing as you would expect and the graphic scenes of him “atoning” for his sins are sure to make you flinch. Director Ron Howard’s vision of the book is uncompromised and the camera angles and cinematography matched up well with what I expected.

A lot has been said about the ‘preposterous’ nature of the movie’s central storyline, that Jesus married and a bloodline exists today, but the story’s validity in the real world shouldn’t weight down the movie, and it doesn’t, except for the few who can’t understand the meaning of the word “fiction.” Whether you believe in the book’s claims or not, The Da Vinci Code brings up an intriguing, fictionalized story for you to follow along with.

Fans of the book and thrillers will find something to like, just not everything, as the story does seem plodding towards the middle only because the movie has to end after 150 minutes whereas the book has no set number of pages. While sure to be a success around the world, Code is by no means award winning cinema and fits in perfectly well with the other summer movies which don’t immediately require us to challenge our brains, only bring money for popcorn, butter it up, and try to enjoy the ride.