The folks out at Lions Gate sent over a copy of Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley, and this might be the best one yet, even if it is a bit on the sad side, given how it all turned out.

Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley gives us Chris Farley as we all want to remember him–the hyperkinetic, bouncy madman who threw himself into his comedy, not to mention pretty much any breakable piece of stage furniture that happened to be in the way. He was Godzilla with a clown nose and a permanent sugar high. He was a man who could play many parts, and you’ll see them here. From thrice-divorced motivational speaker Matt Foley, who gave us the immortal phrase, which must always be shouted when spoken, “AND I LIVE IN A VAN...DOWN BY THE RIVER.”, to Todd O’ Connor, member of the immortal Chicago Bears fan society known as Bill Swerkski’s Superfans, and beyond.

It’s truly impressive to watch this man work. Many times–MANY times–you can see the others involved in the various sketches with Chris try, desperately, to restrain themselves from bursting out into laughter of their own, during the sketch. Sometimes, they won’t even manage to succeed.

There’s a phenomenal range of casting here, Farley will be all over, and in fact, you’ll have a shocking four montages comprised of little bits and pieces of Farley’s career, of which their are many delightful pieces.

In fact, about the only real downside to the massive Chris Farley retrospective is the overly awkward and deeply unpleasant installment of The Chris Farley Show, in which he interviews celebrities like Jeff Daniels and Paul McCartney as only he can. It’s a lot more subdued, and Farley’s playing a guy who’s wildly insecure around celebrities. Frankly, this isn’t worthy of Farley. Farley’s work is potent stuff, vicious and explosive, and watching him play a shrinking violet really doesn’t wash with pretty much his entire body of work. It’s so out of place that I don’t know why they included it in the DVD–this is NOT the best of Chris Farley. This is Farley at his lowest. But I guess it takes a little down side to make everything else look even better by comparison, because indeed, that’s  just what happens.

Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley is indeed the best of his work, for the most part. The sheer hilarity of the Farley work is something to be seen, and you should enjoy it. I remember much of this myself–the Farley / Spade era of Saturday Night Live was back around high school for me, so I remember seeing a good chunk of this in the original airings–so it’s personally exciting for me too.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands Saturday Night Live: The Best of Chris Farley a full ten out of ten for being almost perfectly a laugh riot in every sense.

The folks out at A&E sent over a real doozy for us to review, folks–the complete series of Zorro. It’s a little chunk of history, as well as a really impressive series spanning a whole lot of DVDs, and we’ve got it right here on release day for you!

Zorro follows the legendary masked avenger of wrongs as he storms through Mexico, battling villains of every type and description from insane soldiers to greedy robber barons and everything in between, though his primary foil seems to be the Alcalde of Los Angeles, over the course of fifteen DVDs, and just south of thirty four solid hours.

This is actually the version of Zorro that appeared on The Family Channel, back when there was a Family Channel on which it could appear. It was filmed entirely in Spain, so it’s about as authentic, looks-wise, as it can get, though to be more precise it probably should have been filmed in Mexico as opposed to Spain, but still, about as close as they could get.

And that leaves us basically with the task of evaluating the episodes themselves. Now, in thirty three hours worth of material, you’ll get your high points and your low points. But I think, for the most part, this is a pretty nicely put together show. Naturally, it’s geared toward a family audience–being as it showed on the Family Channel back in the early nineties (this actually ran from 1990 to very nearly 1994) pretty much guarantees it–but it’s not half bad.

Sure, Zorro is maybe a bit too much like some kind of weird 19th century Batman analogue, with an unfathomable amount of science-y stuff going on (I’m sorry, but 19th century Spanish nobility should NOT have hidden crime labs in their houses. That’s just a bit too ludicrous even for me.), but it’s still fairly entertaining.

And here’s the best part–this whopping great DVD package will not only give you the complete series of Zorro, but you’ll also get the original Douglas Fairbanks silent film The Mark of Zorro, the first chapter of the 1939 serial Zorro’s Fighting Legion, trailers for several other serials and the original pilot for the Zorro series, which featured a different actor entirely.

So if you’re fond of Zorro, or simply want some good family entertainment with a little excitement built in, then the Zorro DVD collection will definitely be one to watch.

The Screenhead Ten Scale, meanwhile, gives the Zorro complete series DVD a nine out of ten–the series may only be moderately good, but the sheer amount of extras involved will make this a truly impressive value.

The folks out at Sony sent out a copy of The Tillman Story for us to have a look at, and this time, you’ll be better served not by a love of music, but rather, by a love of news.

The Tillman Story follows professional football player Pat Tillman, who left his pro football career behind in 2002 in order to join the Army Rangers. Tillman didn’t survive this choice, but it’s what happened after that that gives us The Tillman Story, as Pat Tillman’s surviving family tries to piece together what happened to their own, even as the media uses his story as a weapon against the government, and the government attempts to use his story as a tool to bolster its own position in Iraq. This is the result of a whole lot of footage and interviews being brought together and shown off in one package.

It’s wildly disconcerting to watch a dead man stare at you from your television set. And that’s about how the first thirty second or so of The Tillman Story will go. But it’ll get even weirder as The Tillman Story starts talking about all the strange little idiosyncracies in the “official” story surrounding Pat Tillman’s death.

The story, meanwhile, is even more disconcerting. You expect this kind of thing, sure–we all know that government isn’t exactly straight with us on every given front, and most of the news is the same–but you never think that so much chicanery might be going on at any given time. That’s what The Tillman Story will show off: chicanery. Lots and lots and lots and epic lots of chicanery.

How much of it is true? How much of what we’re seeing is accurate? Well, that’s sort of the problem with The Tillman Story–it’s clearly gunning for a “we’re telling the truth and everyone else is lying” angle, and they’ve got some interesting idiosyncracies to point out. Something is up; the sheer amount of logic issues prevent any other conclusion. But just how much of this is a lie ginned up to serve as some kind of propaganda project and how much of this is just someone misunderstanding something is tough to tell.

Still though, for history buffs–especially recent history buffs–you’ll find a look at one of the first major events of the new millenium, with lots of interviews and analysis to give it extra credibility. Still, considering that they’ve got a box quote that says “One of the most important movies you’ll ever see”, and the quote comes not from a film critic, but from frequently disputed (and occasionally debunked) filmmaker Michael Moore, well, now things get even more convoluted. But then the ending shows up, and that makes things even more bizarre.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives The Tillman Story a seven out of ten for being a compelling though skewed look at a strange case in the first big event of the twenty first century.

The folks out at Anchor Bay sent us a little something interesting in the form of Jack Goes Boating, and this one’s going to be a bizarre little title that should get a lot of drama buffs interested.  Will anyone else like it? Stay tuned.

Jack Goes Boating follows Jack, a limo driver, and Connie, a funeral sales rep who find themselves together thanks to Clyde and Lucy, another couple.  And the relationship between Jack and Connie starts to slowly build, the two steadily grow closer, and eventually, things start looking pretty bright for them. But just as one starts, another starts showing signs of trouble. While Jack and Connie are growing closer together, Clyde and Lucy are starting to fall apart. Can Clyde and Lucy keep it together even as Jack and Connie are finding their happiness together?

I was surprised here, really I was; watching the evolution of these couples, as one finds itself starting and the other finds itself buckling, is actually pretty interesting stuff. There’s a constant intertwining of the two couples’ lives here–parts of each others’ lives are constantly cropping up in everybody else’s, resulting in this deeply complex and downright unnerving title.

The last twenty-odd minutes of Jack Goes Boating are a downright bizarre, almost surrealist experience–it helps that there are actually a lot of drugs involved in the scene, but still, it’s a real mindbender.

That can, actually, be the high point and the low point of Jack Goes Boating–it’s a real mindbender. See, the story itself is oddly put together; watching Jack get better–he learns to swim and learns to cook, all for various things he’ll do with Connie–is an experience, but toward the end it will briefly collapse under its own weight (I’m really getting wildly into metaphors for this, but I assure you it’s quite necessary given the nature of the material I’m working with here.) for only a little while before turning around.

It helps to consider that this is actually a film adaptation of an off-Broadway play, which probably by its nature should be more than a little unreal in the first place. Still though, it will actually be an interesting one to watch–fellas, take note, this one may be a good date movie if you’re prepared for a truly weird time–and though it’ll be a bit challenging to keep up with all the strange twists, the end result should be worthwhile.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Jack Goes Boating a seven out of ten–despite its weird nature and its bizarre script, the whole package will be much more palatable than anyone might have figured it’d be.

The folks out at Sony sent over a copy of Nowhere Boy for us to have a look at, and considering we just got off a fact-based representation of the life of John Lennon, it probably was a good move to get a kind of docu-drama thing going. That’s just what we got with Nowhere Boy, and how much you’ll want to see it will depend, once again, on just how much you’re into John Lennon.

Nowhere Boy takes us back to John Lennon’s boyhood, in which a young Lennon lives with his aunt and uncle. But following his uncle’s sudden death, Lennon’s mother comes back around, longing for the “normal” family life she’d left behind by leaving her son with her sister. And while this particular dose of family drama between the personification of dour gravitas and the personification of madcap hijinks, John Lennon is about to run into Paul McCartney and launch off on a whole new life. But even as this change is about to hit, a whole new set of tragedies emerge that shape the young Lennon’s life irrevokably.

I have to admit, while I was never very interested in pretty much anything relating to The Beatles, especially not John “Imagine” Lennon, but this was still interesting enough to watch. A lot of good old fashioned interplay, lots of broken family drama…plenty of entertainment to go around, even if you’re not the drama type. But you should at least be the musical type, because there are tons of great songs involved in this, and not just Beatles songs, either, but plenty of great fifties and sixties stuff, with some Elvis thrown in for good measure. Plus you’ll get to see a dramatized version of The Quarrymen, Lennon’s original band, covering Maggie May.

Some parts of this are a little too overly-dramatic, a little too unpleasant to really be enjoyed, but though much of this is preaching to the choir, there will still be things in here that non-music buffs can appreciate.

Perhaps the big problem is that Nowhere Boy spends a lot of the second half being actively depressing, and that’s not exactly a huge bell-ringer for high marks in my book unless you’re actively looking to not enjoy yourself. In fact, they’ll even drop a real bomb with about fifteen minutes left to the movie, and that’s probably the wrong place to put in something sad.

So, okay…maybe they’ve got the timing all wrong. Maybe the drama’s a little on the strong side for anyone’s good. Maybe you’ll really have to be a John Lennon fan to get the most out of this but still, it’s really not that bad.

And as such, the Screenhead Ten Scale hands Nowhere Boy a seven out of ten. It’s great for the fans, it’s great for music buffs, but it’s just fine for most everybody else.

And that one string in question? Oh, you know better, folks–I don’t give away those secrets right in the first paragraph. You’ll have to stick around until after the plot rundown on this one, but rest assured, I saw No Strings Attached today, and I am not at all happy.

No Strings Attached follows young career folks Adam and Emma. Adam’s a production assistant on the newest Glee knockoff whose father is a eighties television star and whose girlfriend just broke up with him…to date his father. Emma’s got some serious emotional problems but covers them up by being brilliant and witty so it just looks like standard eccentric behavior. The two of them meet, off and on, throughout their lives until they get to a strange common point. Emma’s emotional problems (she describes them as “like an emotional peanut allergy”) keep her from getting close to guys, so she lives a pretty lonely life. Adam’s feeling in full loser mode because he lost his girlfriend to his father, so the two make an agreement: the titular “no strings attached” sex for as long as they can stand it, as long as no one feels anything more than that. When either does, they’ll break it off. And of course, it’s not long before they do start feeling it, and that makes things all the stranger.

It was a tragic series of events that left me with nothing else to review today except an Ashton Kutcher romantic comedy that not even the studio looks for to succeed (some projections had this pegged at “mid-to-high teens million” in return, but the budget is a whopping $25 million–Wikipedia is awesome), and as I said before, I wanted one string attached to this movie. Preferably one thick enough to support my weight so I can twist it into a noose and hang myself rather than sit through this drivel again. Not that I’d want to try it, but I think I would have had more fun sticking my foot into a working lawnmower, because then, at least it would have been exciting. Instead, it turns out a lot like a bouquet of carrots–it’s trying desperately to be cute but it just comes off weird instead.

Seriously though, No Strings Attached was painful to watch. Sure, in the beginning, it was kind of funny–watching Natalie Portman go from this kind of creepy little girl who was way more mature than she should have been to an overgrown little girl is an interesting twist to say the least–but it quickly fell apart. Ashton Kutcher, meanwhile, has all the acting skill of certain kinds of masonry. Yes, a brick might have portrayed an equally well done Adam here. The script is a disaster, packed with all sorts of logical impossibilities and strange holes. For instance, what’s with the donut holes? Emma keeps Adam mostly at arm’s length throughout the movie, but they have sex ten, twenty times and bickety-bam! she’s sufficiently goofy over him that she’s got to gnaw her way through a huge box of donut holes to douse the pain? Really? Who did Kutcher have to bribe to get into this little ego trip, that ended, frequently, in shots like this?

Seriously, this wasn’t fun at all. If it weren’t a tax writeoff I’d be demanding my money back, possibly with a torch and pitchfork. Granted, I’m totally not a rom-com kind of guy but this thing was just a sick, sad joke. About the only high point here was the delightfully smarmy Kevin Kline, a man who clearly can act, but was so sorely underused that his solid performance was a slap in my face because it got so quickly shoved aside for Kutcher’s latest attempt to play the exact same role he usually ends up playing. I bet the blooper reel is packed with footage of Portman calling Kutcher “Kelso” by mistake.

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives this exercise in misery a three out of ten for being a poorly put together disaster that started out fairly funny but couldn’t hold it together before dissolving into a weepy cloud of cliches, ripoffs and horror. And not the good kind either–the train wreck kind.

What has become of John Carpenter? The indie director who shaped the horror genre of the 80’s with his iconic 70’s output (Halloween, The Fog) has fallen far from grace. While his 70’s films appear dated, in the 80’s he made the brilliant The Thing (the Carpenter-less prequel is due out this year. Expect it to flop), Escape from New York, and Big Trouble in Little China. Indeed, 3 of his films were remade in the past decade. But ever since his botched remake of Village of the Damned the master of horror has been failing miserably. And his new flick The Ward is no exception.

Set in 1960’s US, a young woman named Kristen (Amber Heard) is found burning down a house. She’s taken to a psychiatric institution and joins a group of disturbed young ladies. Kristen attempts to escape when she realises that the girls are starting to disappear under suspect circumstances, and a strange, distorted female figure is seen creeping around. Her appeals to a sympathetic doctor (Jarred Harris) go unnoticed.

The Ward in a way is a throwback to the kind of horror the 80’s were full of. But while audiences lapped that up like a MacDonalds milkshake at the time, they’re more sophisticated now. An uninspired film like this will offer very little. Indeed, so uninspired is this hack job that on almost every front the film falls flat. Heard is unconvincing (as are the other gals, especially the otherwise promising Lyndsy Fonseca), she doesn’t even look remotely like she’s from the 1960’s (the 80’s clothing doesn’t help either), and most of the cast use modern-day vernacular. Why set it in the past if you’re not going to bother?

But these gripes are nothing compared to the plot. READ ON »

I admit, I enjoyed the Tom Hanks version of The Ladykillers when it came out back in 2004, but what I wouldn’t find out until some time later was that it was actually a remake of a movie made back in 1955. And that’s exactly what I’m going to cover today, courtesy of the folks at Lions Gate who sent a copy out: the 1955 version of The Ladykillers.

The Ladykillers, part of Lions Gate’s Studio Canal collection,  follows Professor Marcus, who along with his band of merry men sets out to rent a room from a sweet old lady so they have a place to practice their music. Doesn’t sound like much of a movie right away, until you discover that neither Professor Marcus nor his cohorts can actually play a note. They’re bank robbers, and they’re using the old lady’s rooms to stage a daring heist. But it’s not going to be as easy as they might think, as even their best laid plans come apart all around them.

The remake is somewhat more comic than the original, but the original has its moments too. In fact, watching this poor dotty old lady be perfectly oblivious to what’s going on around her is delightfully comic. She has a way of throwing a monkey wrench in the villains’ plans by her mere presence, and it’s a real delight to watch as this eminently cheery, eminently polite little old lady screw up plan after plan and have absolutely no idea what’s going on is just a pure delight.

I spent a lot of time laughing at this odd little anachronism, this relic from nearly sixty years ago, that became such a bizarre comedy of errors. It’s packed to the gills with terrific performances, and frankly, seeing Alec Guinness play a bad guy was definitely a thrill in its own right.

It’s a bit darker of a comedy than some might expect, especially toward the end, and a bit dryer than many would prefer, but the end result is still a lot of laughs and a couple nice surprises besides. It’s very well put together, and is a downright riot.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands The Ladykillers, this terrific assemblage of great performances and a fine script a nine out of ten. The remake was pretty good, but the original is a real step up in terms of sheer likability. Whether you mean to see the remake or not, definitely take a little time for the original.

Today brings with it something of a shocker for you, folks–before today, I had never see Highlander. Sure, I’d seen a few episodes of the television series, but never any of the movies. They’d just never caught my interest. But now, they’re out on Blu-ray and the folks at Lions Gate sent a copy out for me to review.  Thus, I’m getting my first exposure to the Highlander series, and we start with the first one–the titular Highlander.

Highlander follows a secret class of people few even know exist: the immortals. One such immortal, Connor MacLeod, has been around a lot of years and seen and done a lot of things, but now he’s in New York City. And in New York, any number of strangenesses can go down in that proverbial New York minute, one of which involves other immortals showing up. There’s only one way to kill an immortal, you understand–much like a zombie, you’ve got to take its head off. But if an immortal should remove the head of another immortal in combat, the survivor gets the loser’s power. Eventually, there can be only one immortal, and this immortal will be a power unlike anything the world has ever seen.

Those of you saying that that’s pretty much the plot of Jet Li’s The One will be right, but Highlander predates it by about fifteen years and without all the weird parallel universe whatnot.

But meanwhile, Highlander will give you an incredible dose of fantasy action. Clancy Brown’s got a true gift for playing the heavy, and he shows it off nicely here–there’s virtually no distinguishing between him and your garden-variety sociopathic weirdo. The fight scenes are nicely choreographed, and though it’s not always great fun–some scenes have a tendency to drag, and I could spot the wires during the climactic fight scene (watch for yourself at 1:51:01 and see the whole thing fall apart nicely)–it’s still hard to deny the Highlander as a bit of great fun that puts action together well with other elements (like a couple nice romantic bits, making this a fair bet for a date movie that no one will see coming).

The Screenhead Ten Scale gives Highlander, a mostly successful title from Lions Gate that has developed a serious cult following in its time, an eight out of ten for being exactly that–mostly successful. It’s not always on, but when it is, it’s a downright beauty.

The folks out at Anchor Bay sent over a cope of Let Me In to review, and this is going to be interesting. It’s a remake of the original Swedish vampire movie, Let The Right One In, and I saw that one earlier. Frankly, I didn’t like that one much–up until the last fifteen minutes or so it was the dullest thing I’d ever seen–but how the remake would turn out, well, that’s what we’d have to get into and find out.

Let Me In takes us to the wilds of New Mexico, where life isn’t pleasant for chronic bully-target Owen. But things look up when he meets Abby, a girl constantly on the move from place to place with the man who seems to be her father. But what Abby actually is is nothing short of horrifying, at least, for everyone but Owen. Will Abby’s terrible secret destroy them both? Or will it give Owen a whole new life?

Chloe Moretz will likely forever be associated with her Hit Girl role in Kick-Ass, and frankly, she’s brought a lot of that to her Abby. Both of them can have that incredibly hyperkinetic bouncing quality to them, at least sometimes, and here it’s a lot darker besides.

Meanwhile, this one will prove to be a bit better than its original, because it actually does a bit more with the plot, instead of just stumbling along like the original did. It’s still not the best thing I’ve ever seen, but it is one of the better vampire movies I’ve seen in a while. I don’t see many good vampire movies, mind you, but this one really does rank right up there.

Oh, and special note–the soundtrack here is terrific, with lots of great eighties and seventies music going on in the background, including lots of Blue Oyster Cult. This lends a great note of authenticity to the proceedings.

In fact, this isn’t half bad. It’s stepped up quite a bit from the original, it’s got a lot more excitement to it, and yes, the climax of the original is in play in this one, as four gigantic jerks beating up on one spindly little boy get exactly what’s coming to them in a grandiose and blood-soaked display of justice. The best part is that most of the horror in question takes place largely off-camera, so what you see are only bits and pieces, leaving you to make inferences as to just how far the whole thing goes. And man…does it ever go a long way!

The end result is a mixed bag but still pretty satisfying title, and as vampire movies go, it’s definitely one of the best.

The Screenhead Ten Scale hands Let Me In a seven out of ten for doing what I thought was the downright impossible and providing a reasonably good quality, reasonably satisfying, and reasonably watchable vampire film. It’s not every day we get one of those, folks, so savor the flavor; it likely won’t come around again soon.