MS. 9MM

1. The Brave One/Warner Wknd/$ 14.0 Total/$ 14.0
2. 3:10 To Yuma/Lions Gate Wknd/$ 9.2 Total/$ 28.5
3. Mr. Woodcock/New Line Wknd/$ 9.1 Total/$ 9.1
4. Dragon Wars/Free Wknd/$ 5.4 Total/$ 5.4
5. Superbad/Sony Wknd/$ 5.2 Total/$ 111.3
6. Halloween/MGM Wknd/$ 5.0 Total/$ 51.3
7. The Bourne Ultimatum/Universal Wknd/$ 4.1 Total/$ 216.2
8. Balls of Fury/Rogue Wknd/$ 3.3 Total/$ 28.9
9. Rush Hour 3/New Line Wknd/$ 3.3 Total/$ 133.2
10. Mr. Bean’s Holiday/Universal Wknd/$ 2.7 Total/$ 28.5

MS. 9MM
The Brave One opens at number one and I cannot believe they didn’t have a better title than this. Seriously. This sounds like an indie film that’s a study in the emotions of someone who’s been the victim of a violent crime but we spend 99% of our time watching them smoke and cry, which is why indie films tend to suck like that. This is just as much about the shooting as the crying and smoking and needed a title that fit. Ms. 9MM? (If you don’t get that, then you missed one of the premier B-movies of the 80’s) In any case, Jodie Foster is the shit. She takes years off between films, but every time she returns, they open at number one, period. She’s also the queen of the “female action movie” and this is also par the course, though they aren’t as usually bang-bang as this one (the real “female action movie” is the “estro-thriller” and this isn’t about suspense they way they usually are). Jodie Foster and her fiancée are savagely beaten in one of the underpasses in Central Park. By the time she recovers and wakes up three weeks later, he’s already dead and buried. Unable to live with the fear she now suffers from, she heads out to buy a gun. She can’t get one immediately the way she wants, but this being New York, there just happens to be someone in the gun shop who can get one for her immediately. How this differs from Death Wish is that Jodie Foster doesn’t go looking for punks to kill. The first time she just happens to be at the deli when some guy shows up to murder his ex-wife and the second time she’s coming home from Brooklyn when punks mess with her, though in the second instance, she doesn’t leave when she can. Nope, she hangs around to put bullets in someone’s ass and the middle-aged woman sitting near me for the 11:00 am Saturday show, could not have been happier. Throughout all this, she struggles with her own trauma and guilt over what she’s become. Then there’s the mild flirtation with the very detective after her, played by Terrence Howard (because she’s already worked with Denzel and he’d never a supporting role anyway) who struggles with his own frustration with law and order. This movie reminded me of the new 3:10 To Yuma in that performances by the leads make up for the gaps in logic that appear regularly. First Jodie Foster heals pretty quickly from happens to her, needs no physical therapy from her brutal assault and isn’t advised to get some emotional therapy by the hospital. Also, she apparently only has one friend who gives up on her quickly. I know she has to be isolated, but even her fiancée’s mother never checks up on her! And there’s no media after her when she’s released, even when she starts talking about violence on her radio show. After her first shooting, they make a big deal about her stealing the surveillance tape, but apparently no cameras work in the subway or parking garage where she does her next few vigilante acts. Sorry, but in post-9/11 NYC, there are cameras every-freaking-where. Unless you take to the rooftops in cape & cowl, you’re going to be caught on tape. Then there’s a point of the forensic evidence, which is discussed by Terrence Howard, but apparently never touches her and she never leaves any (she’s injured at one point, but seemingly leaves no blood at the scene). Still, the performances are good, it’s fun to watch the assholes we hate in the city die and if you’ve got some Jodie lust, that leather jacket she’s rocking in the last half of the movie is gonna moisten some seats at Henrietta Hudson’s. Even Terrence Howard notices it, but it’s not meant for him or anyone with a penis.

HIS FAILURE TO BECOME A TEEN SENSATION DROVE HIM TO CRIME
3:10 To Yuma is down to number two and you can’t have a good western without a good bad guy and what kind of bad guy are you if you don’t have a gang and no gang is complete without a bloodthirsty second-in-command played here by…Ben Foster? Are you kidding me? Not only is it Ben Foster, but also he’s the guy in the poster. Yeah, that’s neither Christian Bale nor Russell Crowe. In that defense, Foster is wearing the best outfit in the movie. And as Christian Bale’s wife, is that…yes, I think it is! Vanity Fair-curse poster girl, Gretchen Mol! She’s the mother who doesn’t want killer Russell Crowe in her home, tells her kids not to talk to him, but later finds her self falling for his game, which you could see coming a mile away. It would have been more original for her to shut him down cold, but Crowe is a bigger star then Bale.

ONCE YOU’VE BEEN TO THE MOUNTAINTOP WHAT ELSE IS THERE TO DO?
Mr. Woodcock opens at number three and you could also call this “Bad Coach” and you’d never think Billy Bob Thornton once wrote and starred in edgy indie work like One False Move and Sling Blade. He’s decided to just go on cruise control and make money playing this same son-of-a-bitch character over and over again. Now it’s just a question of what other occupations he can slide this persona into. Ice Cream Man, Kindergarten Teacher, Social Worker, Couples Therapist…he could do this forever. But if I’d gotten to bone Angelina Jolie during her 20-something-bisexual-freaky-sexy prime, I’d lose the impulse to work hard too. I mean, that’s why men do things and once they have them, they kinda stop and their music/writing/acting turns to shit. So if you want great art from men, ladies. Stop sleeping with them. You have no idea how much this column would suck if I were getting laid.

STOP DRAGON MY HEART AROUND. YEAH, I WENT THERE.
Dragon Wars opens at number four and with a million “quality films” seemingly opening every week (this week alone it was The Brave One, Eastern Promises, Across The Universe, Great Wall of Sound, The Rape of Europa, Silk, December Boys, Ira & Abby and King of California) it solved the problem of which of them I’d see on Sunday morning: none. A 90-minute movie about the army fighting dragons in the middle of LA or one of the 120+ minute “Academy, look at me!” films? Yeah, you know how we do. But it was fun. This is actually a Korean film called D-War and I have to wonder if there’s a version of this with Korean actors in the starring roles. If not, why they hell do you make a movie with a bunch of B-list white actors? When Robert Forester is your biggest name… No one here is making $70M dollar movies with Korean actors. Not that it really matters, but there is an over-explanation of how two serpents are fighting to ascend and become real dragons. One is good and one I evil. Ascension comes from the life force of a special girl born once every 500 years. She’s guarded by two men: a master and his student. Of course, the student falls in love with the girl and rather than sacrifice her, they commit suicide, so everyone waits 500 years until the girl is reborn in LA. The student is reborn too as a reporter for CNN, I mean CGN as shown here. The old master however, is still around and kicking waiting for this. A good thing too, ‘cause the student is still a moron, and pretty much spends the movie not doing what he should and everything happens despite him. But who really cares? We’re here to see the monsters and when they attack in the middle of downtown LA it’s as much fun as when the same thing happens in Transformers and easier to comprehend, as sometimes I didn’t know what the hell I was looking at when the machines were fighting. Particularly thrilling to the 8-year-old inside me is the battle between the attack helicopters and the flying monsters that spit fire. Someone put serious work into that and it show. Also what I liked was that modern weapons put a hurtin’ on magical monsters, which you almost never get. Reign of Fire, that movie about dragons taking over the world sucked because you find out at the very freaking end that a big steel arrow can kill them, but someone the arsenal of the US military accomplished nothing? Here, bullets and rockets may not pierce scales, but they obviously hurt the big serpent and kill the smaller monsters. Too bad all the imagination and talent went to creating the monsters, because those moments in between with the people never stop sucking and I can’t get over how non-heroic the hero was. They should have watched the other Korean monster movie from this year to show you can still be flawed, but still be a hero.

SOMETIMES THE QUARTERBACK IS NICER THAN THE GEEK
Superbad is down to number five and not to harp on this, but it’s sad when you realize the women of the painfully inferior American Pie were better fleshed out, which is why they shared in the success of the film and these poor girls will not (a lack of nudity doesn’t help). It’s why you know who Tara Reid is, did more for Allyson Hannigan than seven seasons of Buffy, was part of a one-two punch with American Pie for Mena Suvari, gave Natasha Lyonne a shot at an indie movie career and why Shannon Elizabeth was oddly considered hot (it pains me still that she was put in a comic book where she was Iron Man’s date).

THE PRICE OF PROGRESS IS THAT NOW EVERYONE IS FREE TO SUCK OUT LOUD
Halloween is down to number six, followed by The Bourne Ultimatum at seven and Balls of Fury at number eight and also in this is George Lopez, who is a Mexican Tim Allen to me. An unfunny comedian who had a long-running show on ABC. If there’s one upside to racism, it means he’ll be prevented from spreading his evil on the big screen. Then again, it didn’t stop Eddie Griffin.

ONE MORE…
Speaking of unfunny minority comedians on the big screen. Rush Hour 3 is down to number nine.

MONTY PYTHON BEING THE WONDERFUL EXCEPTION TO THE RULE
Finally, Mr. Bean’s Holiday closes out the top ten at number ten. Recently, an Englishwoman tried to convince me that British comedy was funnier than American comedy. Given the fact that 90% of American comedy sucks and I’m sure the same holds for Brit TV (friends sucked as much as Coupling---which then gave way to an even worse American remake), and the obviously cultural differences (we seem to love humor based around getting hit in the nuts, while they remain obsessed with transvestites or the bum) the simple fact is….she’s just fucking wrong and this piece of crap is proof of it! USA! USA! USA!

AMERICA’S FAVORITE TRAINWRECK
Speaking of Tara Reid, how happy must she be knowing that Britney Spears is now the new standard of hot mess after taking the crown away from Tara Reid’s direct pupil, Lindsay Lohan. Yes, I did watch the MTV Video Awards, though I don’t know why. I’m 40. There is nothing about this show that is meant for me anymore. Though after reading some posting online, some twenty-somethings feel the same way (though it was the girls on Jezebel.com and those bitches hate everything). What is that bullshit of showing you hot bands rocking hotel suites then cutting away. Yeah, I understand you could go online, but I’m not online when I’m watching fucking television. It was the dumbest idea ever, though with some nice matches. Nothing hurt more than not being able to see the full performance of Fall Out Boy and Rhinanna doing her very 80’s pop rocker “Shut Up And Drive” (I like that song and not just because she’s got Captain America’s shield on her jacket in the video). Instead, we get a fucking eternity of Chris Brown, who is the answer to the question, “What if there was a second Usher, but with worse music and twice as annoying.” But the train wreck of Britney Spears cast a shadow over everything that followed. Did you even remember other people had performed until I just reminded you? It’s fitting she’s in Vegas. I mean, what screams Las Vegas more than southern superstar, now bloated and giving lame performances. Only it took Elvis 20 years to fall that far. Girlfriend did it in half that time. But her apologizing for it is bullshit. If she’d done a good show, you wouldn’t have been half as entertained and she sure has hell wouldn’t have been the top news item MTV needs to apologize for that whole goddamn show. Of course the irony is, as much as we love to tear people down, we love comebacks and underdogs. Besides, the song is currently rising up the charts, so she’s weeping all the way to the bank.

BACK TO “YOUNG GIRLS IN TROUBLE WITH EACH OTHER #7”
Since the 70’s there have always been directors talking about wanting to used actual sex in a movies, which to me is jus their way of getting more pussy in auditions, but I’m cynical that way. A few have tried to less-than-impressive results if not outright disasters. The problem is, sex pulls you out of a movie. Even if it’s something as simple as a bare ass or pair of breasts, you stop seeing that character and see that ass and those breasts. Now if you can’t get past a pair of tits, how are you supposed to work with an erect penis? This is the problem of Tell Me You Love Me, the new series on HBO. It’s three couples with the same therapist. You’ve got the young woman with the non-committal boyfriend and her own jealousy issues. You’ve got the married couple whose daughter has started menstruating at 10 and the husband would rather masturbate than have sex with his wife (who wants to ignore their daughter’s puberty). Then there’s the couple trying to have a baby and can’t which is pressuring their marriage. Finally, the therapist has apparently her own ghosts, but if you’re down for senior sex, it’s there. Again, if you can’t handle boobs, you gonna handle old boobs? And watching porn doesn’t make you more immune to this. In fact, it may make me less, because sex is supposed to be separate. There is no plot. There is no movie. Just a collection of sex scenes. So when the young couple starts having sex and I’m impressed by the realism of her grinding on him, I see his balls and I’m out of the show. Now I’m thinking about how they’re hiding his dick to shoot this, since they aren’t really having sex. The other sex scenes are typical Hollywood-over-in-thirty-seconds-with-no-sweat-or-puddle type of scenes---until the end. It’s the couple who can’t conceive and she’s found out that it’s not her, so when they’re at home on the couch, she decides to jerk him off, as if she could see what’s wrong with his junk (his baby batter, his Oil of Onan, his man-milk…). Enter the erect penis onscreen. Okay, it’s not a real penis, but still it’s disconcerting. Then she starts her handjob and I’m so out of this show I might as well be reading. Aside from the fact I’m watching this actress (the wife from Mind of the Married Man and was recently on Lost) jerk a fake dick, I’m thinking how he’s over acting because she just started and it’s not that good. Just a slightly rough up and down action (no lube, no corkscrew motion on the head, nothing), but he’s in ecstasy. Then he comes. And we see it. Yes, a cumshot on HBO. Again, I’m so out of this show I’m playing music in a club somewhere. All I can think of is how many takes that took. What if the director thought that was too much sperm? Maybe not enough? Who’s the guy who has to refill the fake sperm in the fake dick? Where are the “dick controllers” positioned on-set? Also, if that were real, he’d be pissed it got on that nice sweater of his, ‘cause it’s not coming out. This is why we can’t have hardcore sex in films, people. You’ll never get used to it, so you’ll forget the reason they’re fucking is to stop the aliens from taking over the planet. You’ll just think how Brad and Angelina actually have pretty ugly genitals for such pretty people.

JUST WAIT UNTIL NEXT YEAR
Yes, football season has started and yes, this will probably be a crap year for my Falcons, but I remain true! Losing Michael Vick hurt, but we went to the Super Bowl before he ever arrived and we’ll go back again one day without him. But I’m not going to defend him. Aside from dogfighting being disgusting and ghetto, this is America. You could kill people and get less shit than for killing dogs. If he didn’t know that then he deserves to be in jail for being so fucking stupid. Now if we can only get Joey Harrington to kill some cats. You don’t go to jail for that because cats suck, but it’s an excuse to get rid of him.

BECAUSE I LOVE IT THAT MUCH

Rmember that RAZR 2 commercial I was going on about? Well you can see the full, uncut version here. Her name is Nikolette Barabas and she's a Hungarian model and he's Matthew Mullins and he's an actor and a member of Sideswipe, a mixed martial arts, acrobatic, entertainment team. And we should really get together and pay them to have sex on film for our enjoyment. �