VIDEODRONE

By only

Monday February 26, 2007

New Movie Mondays
Tenacious D: The Pick of Destiny
This movie isn’t great. It doesn’t feel right. Imagine Mike Meyers coming out with Wayne’s World 3 right now. How lame would that be? You’d be like “you’re Shrek, and you really annoy me.” That’s how this movie goes. Tenacious D was Jack Black about a decade ago. He’s been Shallow Hal and God damn King Kong since then. You expect us to believe that you’re some mangy acoustic rocker? Now that you’ve been on fucking Grey’s Anatomy? Get real pal.

Tideland
Terry Gilliam has had his ups and downs. Time Bandits was great. So was 12 Monkeys. Fisher King was borderline, and Brothers Grimm was a big waste. Tideland is kind of all of these put together in a dark and twisted “Alice in Wonderland” story but with heroin addicted parents and talking Barbie doll heads. All the magic that little ex-Python can visually muster is provided, and we eventually understand it’s about a little girl who turns inward to escape the sad life she is forced to live. You gotta wonder if there was ever a script for this thing though. The story goes off in so many strange tangents you get pretty wowed, but end up wondering what the hell the point was.

Stranger Than Fiction
Hollywood is a great place for falling in love. The nerdy sensitive types always score hot looking women who bake tasty chocolate chip cookies. Conflicts are always easily resolved, the soundtrack is always perfectly cued, and everything gets wrapped up neatly at the end with a little happily ever after. Stranger Than Fiction is an exceptional romantic comedy, and who doesn’t mind getting lost in the wonderful world of cinema now and then? Even if it’s complete bullshit.

Factotum
Casting Matt Dillon as a scruffy, alcoholic writer was a bad idea. New rule: If you were in The Outsiders and your name isn’t Ralph Macchio, you are not allowed to take serious roles in movies. You are here for our entertainment, and that’s it. Let’s see more Point Break out of you guys, and a whole lot less of the poop that Matt Dillon has been trying to pull over on us lately. We turned this off half way through and never looked back. Sorry Charlie.

The Heart of the Game
This is the real Hoosiers, but with girls instead of boys, and no alcoholic Dads stumbling out onto the court. An inspirational documentary that is actually pretty awesome, it follows a girls high-school basketball team called the Roughriders as they get a new coach and spend three years fighting for the state championship. Just like in the movies they have a great rivalry with the Bulldogs, but the stories behind both teams are so compelling it’s hard to know who to cheer for. Plus there’s sexual exploitation, racism, bigotry and social politics, not to mention tons of 18 year-old girls who put Only’s intramural scrimmage team to shame.