BABY BOY (2001): QUICK VIEW: Avoid.
      Director John Singleton first struck gold with his hit BOYZ 'N THE HOOD, which I recently watched again. One of those watching with me was a 24-year-old white girl. While she sat enthralled, I, being older, uglier and a stitch wiser, had to smirk at this ‘classic’ which is mostly a hodgepodge of sentimental stereotypes spouting self-righteous diatribes worthy of Fat Sharpton or Jesse “Booty Call” Jackson.
      Still, the flick has its moments, and Cuba Gooding Jr. remains a fine actor.
      When I pointed out to the girl the infrequency of real-life drive-by shootings, even at their statistical peak, she replied in a sad voice, “But it’s happening somewhere.”
      Good work, Singleton.
      Over a decade later, B.N.T.H. can still choke up “I-love-all-races-but-stay-outta-darktown” liberal phonies. I only wish I was black right now, stroking my hard-on in a roomful of white college girls as the credits for your masterpiece roll; then even I would get laid.
      Of course, my man, despite hopeful predictions by white liberal critics, you have never again struck gold. POETIC JUSTICE was a flop. So was HIGHER LEARNING. And ROSEWOOD. And that horrible new SHAFT.
      As far as moviemaking goes, you’ve been given more chances after fucking up than a henchbeast of Skeletor.
      Which brings us to BABY BOY, your latest train wreck, now on video, enjoyed by the white guilt critics yet still flopping at the box office.
      Stuffed into this 2 hour+ nightmare of overcooked acting and needless drama is a beautifully shot movie with a straight-up story. But I’ll be damned if I’m going to find it. Shit, you MADE the fucking thing and YOU couldn't find it!
      Tyrese Gibson (whom I never heard of but is an R&B singer?) plays Jody, a 20-something, jobless, lazy ass brutha still living in his Mom’s house. Despite these admirable qualities, he also fucked up by having 2 babies by 2 different women. His friend Sweetpea (played well by Cuba's younger bro Omar Gooding) has no brats but is similarly lazy and apathetic.
      This movie really spoke to me, as I’m lazy and apathetic but, after awhile, everything became repetitive and the story stalled. Things get even creepier when it’s evident Jody’s mom, who can’t be much older than 30, is still violently fuckable (like all the black hotties in this flick), a fact later proven by Ving Rhames as an ex-con.
      Oh, yeah, Snoop Dogg plays an angry ex of one of Jody’s ho-hos who is being released from prison. Believe me, none of this matters because these characters are overdrawn and lame.
      The odds were stacked against this kind of movie even on its best day. Think about it: here’s an unpleasant story that chastises young black men for not getting off their asses and doing something with their lives, so now that target audience is estranged and won’t see it. Without their interest who the hell else is going to see it, old Chinese women?
      Maybe they or anyone else would have, except the story is too long, too slow and too dull. Steer your low-rider bicycle around this pothole of a movie and go grab a 40 instead. --- Ben La Rosa, October 3, 2002.

A. I. (2001): QUICK VIEW: Horrible. Twenty minutes of cool special effects trapped in TWO AND A HALF fucking hours of bad story, bad logic and boredom. The movie's plot WILL be spoiled before it can spoil YOU. You can thank me later.
      A.I. premiered as a big deal: Stanley Kubrick spent 15 years working on it then died. Steven Spielberg then picked up the slack and didn’t die. Like Spielberg, I didn’t die (too bad) but instead PRAYED for death while suffering through his cyber-snorefest.
      Having Spielberg finish Kubrick’s work is like having nightmarish Salvador Dali artwork finished (off) by a painter of "Teddy Bear" Franklin Mint Collector Plates.
      But, considering that without some project to inject with his particular brand of manipulative sap Spielberg will do stupid shit like digitally edit all of the guns out of the new politically correct re-release of E.T., I can’t say the man exactly wasted his time on A.I.
      He did, however, waste MY time. I haven’t been this pissed since losing the lottery.
      The terror begins as soon as this plot overview ends. It’s 2099 or something. Global warming (a bullshit theory, by the way) has melted the ice caps. Robots that assist humans, called ‘mechas,’ are a huge industry. William Hurt plays a scientist at a mecha company who proposes a robot that can ‘love’ be built. I like Hurt. He’s a good actor but so far his sensitive soulfuck routine has about as much chance of succeeding in a sci-fi movie as sound does in the vacuum of space (see my LOST IN SPACE review.) The bastard really isn’t in the movie that much but, storywise, 'he' started it all so fuck him.
      So, anyhoo, this dull couple have a dying 'kid-sicle' at a cryogenics center but, lo and behold, the dad works for Hurt’s mecha company and he and his wife are selected as test candidates for ‘David’ --- the loving robokid.
      When their kid-sicle is cured the mom ditches David (Haley Joel Osment) in the woods and the rest of the story is about David and his misadventures.
      Let’s break this sleep-inducing nougat into three digestible chunks. CHUNK 1: Mechas of all kinds are at work in the world, typically servants and fuckbots (the flick calls them ‘lover robots’ --- fuckbot please!). Other than to see if it could be done, why would William Hurt or anyone else design a robot that ‘loves?’ The fuckbots can already simulate all types of pleasure, including reactions to human love. So why build a machine that suffers when it is not loved? The only real reason would be just that: robots designed specifically for suffering and torture. Pretty much what God, or somebody, does now with us, his human pets.
      But that’s not the story here.
      The entire chunk of the movie with David at the foster parents’ house makes no sense. The company has given them David as a test subject, worth perhaps millions of dollars, yet there is no feedback or follow-up from them about the experiment. The parents appear rich so why is the mom doing chores instead of some mecha servant (so David can spook her as she folds sheets.) The dad is a pussy and has no bearing on the story at all. It’s only the mom who bonds with David. But when the kid-sicle is miraculously cured and comes back she ignores David even as the prick kid-sicle tortures him. There’s no one to cheer here: neither David, the stupid robot, nor the dull, moronic humans.
      David’s foster family life is over when some bad shit goes down at the kid-sicle’s birthday party. Curiously, all of the people in this rich neighborhood of the future are white and all the kid-sicle’s party friends are pre-teen white boys (no girls.) Where’s the usual multicultural gang (blacks, Asians, girls, gays, vegans, cows, trees, electric cars) H’wood’s always ramming down our throats?
      I suspect that Spielberg, like most liberal fucks, wanted to imply that so-called minorities will be cheated out of the Wonderful Future. To imply ‘people of color’ are, or can be, successful at any time or age in history is a slap in the face to all the ‘me-victim’ whiners out there now.
      Also, it’s now the H’wood way that whenever it’s time to show people being cruel in movies it’s better to have the torturers be an all-white bunch.
      More plot sloppiness: Though a machine, David has no concept he’s a machine. He has no ‘off’ switch, not even a word that will put him in ‘sleep’ mode. He has no guidance from Hurt's mecha company and the dad never does so much as make a phone call to his work.
      Also, for a robot with solid safety protocols, David is too easily outwitted by the cruel kid-sicle’s twisting of words. Result: David ends up scaring the parents so bad they want to get rid of him.
      In order to keep the story going, rather than return David to the company for destruction (the mom feels that would be too cruel) the parents decide instead to ditch David in the woods and ABANDON him. Now, assuming that the mom has (or had) intense feelings of ‘some’ kind for David, how the fuck is abandoning him more merciful than a quick trip to the lab to be unplugged?
      David blabs about love but has no real understanding of concepts like ‘living’ or ‘sentience’ so what would be ‘killed?’
      The mom (named Monica, now there’s a fresh name we haven’t heard, oh, 3 trillion times during Clinton days) is just an awful character. She’s not mentally tough enough to write David off as a machine but she is callous enough to abandon him, though he is capable of feeling pain.
      Fuck you, lady.
      Like a tattoo on a black person, this shit makes no goddamned sense.
      And the pussy dad wasn’t even in the car that permanently dropped off the robokid.
      CHUNK 2: Jude Law plays ‘Gigolo Joe’, a fuckbot. We see him doing his thing, wooing a human female. For a moment I felt a sting of jealously because here’s a robot, getting vagina, while I’m watching that robot. The jealousy went away quickly as I realized in the world of A.I. I would be too busy with my own female hottie fuckbot and to hell with human females forever.
      The fuckbots of A.I., both men and women, roam the streets like real whores, getting picked up by humans. This seems unlikely. Most people would own their own fuckbots.
      Why ride the bus if you own a car?
      Joe enters an apartment and finds his next trick murdered and the dead woman’s pissed off husband still there after slitting her throat. Amazingly, the husband doesn’t attack Joe. Instead he talks shit to his wife’s corpse and calmly leaves.
      Unbelievable.
      More questions: Joe is a fuckbot. Someone has to own him to collect profits, be it a person or company. No such entity appears at any time. Also, Joe is a fuckBOT. Even were he programmed to harm or kill his clients (damned unlikely, that’s bad for biznass) his robot eyes are cameras, he can record sounds, etc. So don’t you think his computer brain would be solid evidence against the murdering husband? Yet we’re supposed to believe that Joe has been successfully framed and therefore must go on the run. Beyond this failed logic, the premise of the scene doesn’t work.
      Though the dead woman looks like a supermodel, she will eventually age, and in a world of walking supermodels, male and female, why would anyone marry to begin with, putting up with all that jealousy and bullshit?
      Eventually, Joe and David, now both on the run, sort of team up and are soon caught by ‘circus folk’ who destroy mechas in an arena called a Flesh Fair, as entertainment for a Jerry Springer-like crowd.
      This makes no sense, on multiple levels.
      Right now in 2002 many cars are made to be up to 75% recyclable and in many places it’s illegal to throw away computer and other electronic parts, so why would people let scrap robots just run around a century later? At the very least people would salvage the power supplies, thus eliminating homeless, wandering robots.
      The Flesh Fair simply ‘kills’ mechas for the crowd’s pleasure but wouldn’t that shit get old fast? The mechas are all clunkers, not even programmed to fear or beg for their lives, so how much ‘fun’ would that be? And why are there only humanoid mechas?
      The ‘death match’ robots we have now are all kinds of cool shapes and designs. The humanoid form is impractical for so many huge scale tasks. There’d be a much wider (and creative) variety of bots and machines were this a more well-thought-out future world.
      At the Flesh Fair, no bots fight other bots (or humans) gladiator style. There’s no competition at all. It’s mindless. Even a demolition derby has some strategy.
      Also, remember it’s supposed to be 2099, so why would a crowd --- even a Jerry Springer-type crowd of dirties --- be sitting on filthy bleachers at some open air pit of stinking oil and smoke when the ‘holovision’ of the future must have 5000 virtual reality sex channels?
      CHUNK 3: Joe and David escape the fair and fly to sunken New York in a stolen police ‘amphibicopter.’ Satellites TODAY can track targets as small as a single vehicle and vidcams are coming soon to every street corner of our Amerikan cities, yet cops a century from now can’t or don’t bother tracking their own vehicles, have no special controls that prevent their vehicles from being stolen and apparently have no interest in recovering them when they ARE stolen.
      Bullshit.
      David’s goal the whole flick is to find the blue fairy (from Pinocchio) and make himself into a ‘real boy’ so Monica will love him, a stupid and repulsive idea. Upon arriving at the company, David meets mecha clones of himself and is so horrified he kills one.
      The whole movie he has acted without any real sense of fear or self-preservation and now, all of a sudden, he starts freaking out about his uniqueness?
      Uh, no.
      William Hurt, we learn, is still a moron. He tells David the company has been monitoring him all along and that he will soon meet some more scientists. Then, inexplicably, Hurt disappears from the movie, never to be seen again, leaving David to wander around the building like a, well, mindless robot. Joe is soon captured by cyberpigs (about that frame-up murder) flying in another hub/chopper, but these cops must be on a hover donut break like the others, as they do nothing to recover the stolen sub/chopper David is sitting in (or David!). And this scene takes place right outside of the company!
      David pilots the sub into the water to await the blue fairy. The movie then leaps ahead 2000 YEARS and, boy, you feel EVERY YEAR of it thanks to tedious, self-indulgent screen shots and sham artistry on the parts of Spielberg and whoever else lost the key to the editing room.
      Bastards! Make it stop!
      So aliens have arrived on earth 2000 years from now, when the earth is enjoying another ice age and all humans are (blessedly) extinct (thanks for the help while we were alive, alien assholes.) The aliens find David and grant him his wish to be loved by Monica by cloning the semen from her dress...not really. I mean by cloning her (for 24 hours) from a lock of her hair.
      So David gets one more day with an ugly human being who was never worth it to begin with.
      Sugar-coated shit.
      Aliens, grant MY wish: Bring me my gun, a pizza and Lark Voorhees fuckbot then leave me alone.
      The only pluses of seeing A.I.: The special effects are excellent and the cityscapes, technology and designs truly magical. So many great stories could have been told in this future of jumbled elements but A.I. wasn’t one of them.
      Skip this shit. I don’t think you could forward through it fast enough with a DVD player on crack. --- Ben La Rosa, March 11, 2002.

      I looked at A.I. for a bit on HBO last weekend and, while the movie's plot is stupid, the special effects were fucking outstanding. Some of the best shit I've ever seen. Unfortunately, special effects without a good story leaves the viewer wanting...wanting to turn the channel.
      The kid is a robot and he desperately wants to become a 'real' little boy so that his mother, who's not even his real mother since she didn't birth him, will then love him.
      The whole movie is about him trying to become 'real'. He's soon after the mythical 'blue fairy' from the Pinnochio story. He thinks this broad can turn him into a flesh and blood human. He's a robot but a dumb one. Hell, all the robots in this movie are dipshits. So the kid never figures out that the blue fairy is a fucking character in a fictional children's book and couldn't turn a tulip into a pear, let alone a robot into a human being.
      The kid is obsessed with being human. After awhile, his whining about not being a 'real' little boy makes you want to grab the remote control and flip it over to a Mexican station to see some hot senoritas shaking their asses but the special effects are so good you keep hanging in there just to see what cool scenery you'll see next.
      The shots where New York City is covered over with ice is absolutely fantastic. This movie was made before the WTC attacks so there they are, the twin towers, their final 30 floors or so sticking out of the ice that encompases all of Manhattan and everything else.
      The aliens and their ships are badass, they just seemlessly float about, and their excavation of New York City --- these guys are alien archeologists --- is no less than outstanding.
      But the main premise, that this robot kid has to find the blue fairy and become real, is just plain dumb.
      Dumb as a bucket full of shit.
      The aliens end up unearthing the robot kid, who is in this indestructable flying machine. They thaw his ass out and discover he has the only memory of the human race that they can find anywhere on earth. The kid talks to the aliens and, again, all he can do is bitch about not being a real boy. So they try their best to placate his stupid little ass and that's about when I ended up turning it off because it got way too fucking mushy and shit for my taste. --- Robert W. Howington, December 17, 2002.

QUEEN OF THE DAMNED (2002): I don’t know what smells worse, this movie or Aaliyah’s rotting corpse.
      I now have a theory about the plane crash that killed her. The producers of this movie hired someone to cause the plane crash because they figured since she was young, beautiful and the only recognizable actor in the film it'd be better to off her and take advantage of the free publicity.
      It was their only hope to make a buck off of this piece of shit.
      So, QUEEN OF THE DAMNED starts with Lestat The Vampire waking up from a long sleep. He emerges into the 21st Century and suddenly decides to form a rock-punk-wannabe band. His goal is to wake Akasha, known as the Queen of the Damned, drink her blood and gain the ability to walk in the sunlight once more and perhaps have a chance to find some fulfillment in his life.
      Akasha, played by Aaliyah, is no ordinary vampire. She is actually considered to be a God. She has the purest of all vampire blood and can cause other vampires to combust in flames simply by looking at them.
      And Aaliyah is hot!!
      Let’s just say she can cause a heterosexual girl like myself to consider a new career in the carpet cleaning business.
      Anyway, this movie reminded me of some cheap Euro-trash rock video. Bad acting, very little gore or effects and just plain dull and stupid. In the end, Lestat suddenly develops a kinder, gentler side and achieves some kind of new appreciation for human life.
      What kind of shit is that???
      INTERVIEW WITH A VAMPIRE was much better than this one. I was very impressed by Brad Pitt, Kristin Dunst and Antonio Bandaros' performances. And they at least brought some humor to the film. QOTD was just plain dull!!!
      One thing I forgot to mention: The actor who played Lestat in the new film had brown hair and eyes. Now, if I remember right, all of those diehard Anne Rice fans were pissed when they found out Tom Cruise, who played Lestat in IWAV, was picked for the role because he didn't have blonde hair and blue eyes. So they went through the hassle of getting him contacts and dying his hair, which I thought made him look pretty cool actually. So why didn't they put up a fuss about the new guy? The new guy also looked and dressed like Jason Lee in THE CROW.
      What a rip the new movie was. It was almost like watching an episode of Buffy the Vampire Slayer or something.
      My recommendation? Buy a cheap porno that has some chick who looks like Aaliyah in it. Trust me, you’ll have a lot more fun!! --- Bitchy Cat, February 28, 2002.

THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS (2001): QUICK VIEW: A great film. See it, somehow.
      It’s hard to review this flick without giving too much story away, as the characters are rich in depth (compared to standard H’wood fare) and full of surprises.
      Royal Tenenbaum is the name of Gene Hackman’s character, a father who left his wife and kids when they were around 13. It’s now the present and Royal wants to go home.
      Angelica Huston plays Etheline, the wife, and the kids are, respectively: Margot (Gwyneth Paltrow) adopted kid, now an award winning playwright, Richie (Luke Wilson) a former champion tennis player, Chas (Ben Stiller) a millionaire who as a child invented Dalmatian Mice. There’s also Eli Cash (Owen Wilson), a childhood friend of the Tenenbaum kids and writer of awful Western novels, Henry Sherman (Danny Glover), the family accountant who asks to marry Etheline and a narrator (Alec Baldwin) who provides much useful background info and ties the film’s ‘chapters’ together.
      Everyone is fucked up in this movie or, rather, they are eccentric characters facing everyday life.
      Chas has two sons he dresses in sweatsuits identical to his own. His wife was killed in a plane crash (in which the boys survived) so he’s obsessive-compulsive about their safety. Richie is tormented by taboo feelings and Margot is just simply depressed.
      Dropped in the middle of all this is Royal, the catalyst of it all, whose return brings all the family back to the original house. That’s the setup.
      The acting is excellent with many funny and tragic moments throughout. The supporting characters are great. The movie is shot beautifully and has a sad '70s feel, propped by the soundtrack.
      This was the first movie I've actually gone to see in a theater in over a year, if that helps you decide.
      Final note: the billboards for SHALLOW HAL depicted Gwyneth Paltrow’s head on a hot body (with fat shadow) that was obviously not her ass and rack. But ever since the billboards, I’ve kinda fallen for her and THE ROYAL TENENBAUMS seals the deal. Whether you’re a fan of hers or not she’s never looked or been sexier than in this film. --- Ben La Rosa, February 25, 2002.

JURASSIC PARK 3 (2001): QUICK VIEW: Well made, fast-paced fun that deserves your rental dollar.
      This "recovered" review of JURASSIC PARK 3 was written from memory, a droplet of aging memory dangling from the spent dickhead of my will to live.
      The original review sent to crazed Texan and head CyberNigga Howington was lost when some CyberDorks switched webhosts without even bothering to notify him! So to all you goddamned dot.bomb nerds jacking off to centerfolds of ASCII code, GET WITH THE PROGRAM. I never picked on you in middle or high school and now vital rants are at stake.
      JURASSIC PARK 3 has dinosaurs in it. The special effects are at least as good as in the other two previous JURASSIC flicks. More importantly, whereas JURASSIC PARK 2: THE LOST WORLD was preachy, arrogant, needlessly shitty and dumb, the makers of JP3 heeded that lesson by keeping their rollercoaster of a movie short, sweet, terror-filled, fast-paced and simple: people land on ‘Dino Island’ and then fight to survive and escape.
      The main characters are likable (you’ll know who they are after the various ‘tokens’ are chomped and stomped to hilarious effect.) Sam Neill returns as paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant, reviving his classic eyes-wide-open, pants-shitting expressions. Fine character actor William H. Macy (the guy who kills his whore wife then himself in BOOGIE NIGHTS) and Sharon Stone-clone Téa Leoni (THE X-FILES' David Duchovny’s real life wife) are divorced parents searching for their 14-year-old son. And let’s not forget "Billy", Dr. Grant’s naïve and idealistic student who must redeem himself among pterodactyls.
      Now go rent JP3. It’s worth it. Most of life isn’t. --- Ben La Rosa, February 11, 2002.

BLADE (1998): QUICK VIEW: Violent, gory, paranoid and pissed off. I loved it.
      Wesley Snipes is BLADE, a rage and hate-filled vampire/human hybrid whose sole mission in life is to kill all vampires.
      Blade’s mother, bitten by a vampire, dies giving birth, leaving him with what villain Deacon Frost observes, "all of our (vampire) strengths and none of our weaknesses (vulnerable to silver and sunlight.)"
      Well, Blade does have one weakness: without a special serum he’ll turn into a complete vampire.
      Time is already running out as the story begins for Blade is slowly becoming immune to the serum. The sheer impossibility of Blade’s mission is revealed through Karen Jenson (played by N'Bushe Wright, a foxy momma), a hematologist bitten during the aftermath of one of the many high energy gun and kung-fu battles.
      Blade takes Karen back to the warehouse hideout where Whistler (Kris Kristofferson), the father figure who provides tech support, is unhappy to see they’re now "taking in strays." Karen’s condition is borderline. She must work to find a cure for herself even as she discovers the world around her a sham, with the real world (police, banks, governments) controlled by vampires.
      Meanwhile, the aforementioned Frost (Stephen Dorff) a 'turned' (formerly human) vampire is busy decoding ancient vampire texts in order to make himself the "Blood God." The reigning Council of centuries-old fogey vampires not only fails to keep Frost in check but actually lights the path for this renegade through their startling incompetence.
      Dorff is perfect in his role, what with his cruel mouth and shiny satin shirts. The great character actor Donal Logue strikes again as Quinn, Frost’s right hand vampire. (This was the first anything I’d seen Mr. Logue in and I was impressed and delighted.)
      Naturally, the movie ends in a showdown between Blade and Frost, a blood blender of special effects and well-choreographed fight scenes.
      Dragging just a tad in certain places, BLADE is otherwise a near perfect movie for its genre: evil eye candy as hypnotic as a roaring fireplace. The upcoming sequel is another reason to live. --- Ben La Rosa, February 11, 2002.

BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF (2002): For weeks I’ve been seeing previews and stories about this movie, BROTHERHOOD OF THE WOLF, and I was thinking, "That looks pretty good."
      Horror and suspense films have always been my favorite and this is a foreign film which makes it seem even more interesting.
      So last weekend when I found out the film was finally being shown in the town I live in (bum-fuck Madison, Wisconsin) I immediately went to see it. The film is set in the French countryside about 30 years before the French Revolution and is about some mysterious killings witnesses say were caused by a gigantic, demonic wolf.
      Right away, the movie begins with a pretty cool death scene that has an EVIL DEAD meets JAWS feel to it. Afterwards, two strangers come into town to investigate the killings. One is a painter/naturalist and the other his Native American blood brother. They soon start a fight with some of the savage, gypsy locals, which turns out to be a CROUCHING TIGER, HIDDEN DRAGON rip-off.
      The movie just goes even more down hill from there. It evolves into a boring, confusing piece of cinematic shit. Towards the end of the movie you find out that the "demonic wolf" is actually a huge lion that has been encased in a heavy shield of spiky armor.
      The lion is controlled by an evil aristocrat that has been using the poor animal as a weapon for his religious sect, which is attempting to control France by scaring the shit out of the peasants and intimidating the King.
      The end of the movie also has a THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS kind of thing going on which only adds to its stupidity. But I did cry at the end when they killed the lion.
      Bastards!!
      The only redeeming part of this movie is some of its imagery and a very realistic looking corpse. However, the guys might like the whore house scene. Lots of perky breasts and firm pink asses!
      Other than that this movie really sucked! I’d rather eat a crack whore’s moldy taco than go see this movie again.
      Nuff said. --- Bitchy Cat, February 5, 2002

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 (2000): Quick View: Mindless fun ruined by post 9-11 reality.
      Warning: Chunks of the non-plot will be ruined if you decide to keep reading.
      I rented MISSION IMPOSSIBLE 2 ‘cause the holiday season tends to amplify the ceaseless horror that is life and the need for escape is greater.
      Well, folks, I was disappointed by this one even without expectations. It’s mindless action, which can be fun, but it’s all been done before. Maybe you’ll love it if you’re 15 and haven't yet seen all the other flicks in the action genre.
      As to why I didn’t warm even to the escapism I sought: the fucking thing starts off with an airline hijacking. A fucking HIJACKING! I had no idea this was in there.
      So much for escaping reality.
      Especially embarrassing is how ridiculously intricate the hijacking is depicted (mid-flight with escape by parachutes and plane crashing into a mountain) when before (and after) 9-11-01 we have solemnly learned anyone can just WALK the fuck past airport security holding a rifle. (I’m not pissed about security, btw. I’m pissed the Middle East hasn’t already been nuked into glass. It’s us or them.)
      But, wait, it gets better! The villain (who resembles but isn’t Antonio Banderas) has the same disguise technology as the good guys: a seamless facemask and electronic voice-changing throat strip which ‘exactly’ duplicates another person’s identity. In a few scenes, the villain, out to steal some biological weapons (ah, reality again) poses as Tom Cruise. I’m not lowering my IQ further by referring to Cruise as his character 'Ethan Hunt'.
      The mask thing REALLY killed any chance I had of enjoying this flick. You see, folks, if you’ve got the technology to pose flawlessly as Tom Cruise, YOU DON’T NEED TO STEAL A FUCKING VIRUS TO RANSOM MILLIONS.
      JUST SELL THE TOM CRUISE MASKS!
      You might want to rent this (but not anytime soon) to see the broad they trot out in this one. Thandie Newton is her name. A piece of ass, of course. And, shit, you know how it goes. If you’re Tom Cruise in a movie you just LOOK at a bitch across the room and she’s yours. The most he said to make her fall in love with him (after fucking her, of course) was, "You’re so beautiful."
      Where’s the escape hatch for this planet? Anyone? Throw me a parachute. Done. --- Ben La Rosa, December 4, 2001.

JACKIE BROWN (1997): There were about 10 people who didn't see JACKIE BROWN, Quentin Tarantino's follow-up to his highly successful reinvention of film noir, PULP FICTION.
      I was one of them.
      It was the year my marriage began falling apart so I was totally consumed by fighting with my (now) ex-wife and working. Well, 1997 passed and JACKIE BROWN quickly slipped from my memory until last weekend when I saw it at Blockbuster and a light bulb appeared above my head saying, "Hey, you never did see that fuckin' flick!"
      Now Tarantino is a bad ass motherfucker, just like it says on Jules' wallet in PULP FICTION. He's done an excellent job with RESERVOIR DOGS, PULP FICTION and --- again --- in JACKIE BROWN (adapted from Elmore Leonard's RUM PUNCH) of capturing the true face of modern crime and, consequently, modern criminals. It turns out criminals are pretty much like everybody else with the same quirks and personal problems. Tarantino has done a great job of demystifying the criminal world and creating his own style of dark humor. He continues this tradition in JACKIE BROWN, which stars Pam Grier (Jackie Brown), Samuel L. Jackson (Odell), Briget Fonda (Melanie), Robert De Niro (Louis), Robert Forster (Max Cherri) and Michael Keaton (an ATF agent).
      Jackie is a flight attendant caught by the local undercover police and Keaton bringing back $50,000 cash money for Odell, an unlicensed gun dealer, from a bank in Mexico. After a heated interrogation from Keaton, and realizing she'll go to jail if she doesn't do what he wants her to do, Jackie decides, in return for her testimony, that she'll set up Odell for the ATF. However, she plays both ends against the middle by telling Odell that she's using the police, under the guise of helping them, to smuggle the rest of his money out of Mexico. Kind of fuzzy, huh?
      Well, the plot gets even weirder when there's an elaborate shell and pea game played with shopping bags full of money in a suburban mall food court. This seeming confusion, however, is more than made up for with Jackson's over-the-top performance of Odell (think Jules from PULP FICTION with some perm relaxer). He says things like, "I may be dumb but I'm no dumbass", "Don't make me put my foot in your ass, girl!" and "This is some repugnant shit (a line he also had in PULP FICTION)!"
      De Niro does a good job of playing a burned-out ex-con. Furthermore, the cinematography and '70s soul soundtrack create the perfect backdrop for this group of fucked up criminals. Even though this movie did borrow heavily from PULP FICTION it was still damn good.
      After all, there's no other flick where you can see Briget Fonda getting buttfucked! --- Todd Taylor, June 12, 2001.

JOE DIRT: Friends, there is karma in this world. For years, I shuttered everytime I looked at photos of myself from 1985 through 1990. These were The Mullet Years.
      My mother further added to my trauma by one day last week opening up some of the old family albums. I discovered during my shameful Mullet phase at least HALF the family was wearing them. There's even one of a whole nuclear family. I can't reveal their identity since I think they're all out on parole at the moment.
      Anyway, in penance for my 5-year-long opitcal torture, my mom suggested we go see JOE DIRT, the new comedy starring David Spade (Joe Dirt) and Dennis Miller (Zaner Wilder).
      If you liked TOMMY BOY, you'll like this movie. If you didn't, then you won't.
      The Plot: Joe Dirt is a janitor at a L.A. radio station and Zaner Wilder, a typical talk radio host, asks Joe to come in and tell them about his life. Joe recounts being born with his skull cracked and his parents putting a mullet wig on his head that ended up becoming permanently infused to his head. He recounts being left by his parents at the Grand Canyon and the various adventures he goes through in trying to find them. This makes for some good visual gags.
      As a result of the radio show, Joe becomes famous and ends up finding his parents, who turn out to be fucked up trailer trash that he was better off without anyway. He also gets the girl of his dreams --- like the late fatso cocaine junkie Chris Farley did in TOMMY BOY. Finally, there's some good supporting roles played by Christopher Walken (Clem) and Kid Rock (Robbie).
      When the movie ended my mom and I hit the parking lot and I immediately lit up a smoke.
      "Hey, didn't you have that same Def Leppard T-shirt Joe wore?" she asked.
      "Yes, mom," I replied in shame.
      I'm just glad she didn't notice the untied, high top sneakers with the shoe tongues hanging out. I cringed when I saw this because I knew it was me 15 years ago.
      Yes, my friends, there is such a thing as karma so all you white guys out there now wearing dreds locks watch out! Your time of reckoning will come! --- Todd Taylor, May 18, 2001.

THE PATRIOT (2000): Since there wasn't shit on to watch Saturday night --- no local teams playing in the NBA or NHL playoffs --- and because I've heard THE PATRIOT had some badass battlefield scenes in it --- a la SAVING PRIVATE RYAN --- I decided to drink a spiked Snapple beverage and tune in HBO to watch Mel Gibson and his South Carolina militia take on the British Red Coats in this action/adventure tale about the American Revolution.
      Without question, Gibson and the filmmakers here have expertly ripped off Gibson's own Academy Award winning picture, BRAVEHEART, in making this film. Both films have the same plot: a man's family and home are attacked by the occupying government's soldiers and he exacts his revenge in a bloodthirsty rage.
      In THE PATRIOT Gibson's character, landowner Bengamin Martin, has his family uprooted by the British, who are busy roaming the countryside looting, raping and slaughtering their American brothers in the name of the King of England and taxation without representation. But it is only after a particularly fiendish British officer shoots his youngest son in the back and then orders Martin's gorgeous Colonial house burned to the ground, that Martin's previously pacifist ways are over and done with. He spends the rest of the movie killing as many Red Coats as he can --- with rifles, guns, bayonets, a Cherokee tomahawk and Jim Bowie knife.
      The gorey and gruesome fight scenes are cool because they're extremely realistic. You see closeups of the soldiers who're about to be killed as they march forward towards the enemy. Their expressions tell you that they know they're about to die. We get to see big cannon balls hit the ground in front of the American troops and then bounce into them, resulting in heads and legs being completely obliterated.
      This shit is some high quality special effects violence, baby.
      Also, we get several scenes of both armies marching to within 30 yards of each other before stopping and standing there like idiots shooting each other dead. Once they both run out of bullets both sides then charge! They stab the living shit out of each other with their bayonets. Fighting back in those old times was strictly mano-a-mano, up close and personal. Guys basically got slaughtered like pigs before dying from bleeding to death. When shown from a distance, as is done in this movie, it's an amazing site watching hundreds upon hundreds of dudes march, shoot, charge, stab and die.
      I found the shocking suicide of a militia member --- he blows his brains out in front of Gibson and the rest of his fellow troops after finding his wife and child dead and home destroyed --- to be a realistic slice of pie rarely found in a Hollywood product. It was actually sort of stupifying having a scene that blunt, and telling, included in the movie, considering it was billed to a wide audience, for parents, kids and all, because the dude's suicide made perfect sense. Why the hell go on living when all you have to live for is dead?
      Later on, when Gibson's militia attacks some lost in the woods Red Coats and shoots them all with extreme prejudice without taking any of them as prisoners of war, one of the militia men, upset at the resoundingly unchecked bloodshed, protests the stern action.
      "How could you just murder them?" he asks Gibson.
      One of Gibson's other men steps in and angrily tells him, "They're Red Coats. They EARNED it."
      And THE PATRIOT earns a viewing by you if you haven't seen it. It's rip-roaring fun. Literally. --- Robert W. Howington, May 14, 2001.

NURSE BETTY (2000): I've seen this movie at BLOCKBUSTER for a couple of weeks now but I've been afraid to check it out. I thought it might suck. The previews for it when it was released last year didn't make me want to go see it. My mom had it rented, though, and said it was good so I chanced it. Hell, I didn't have to pay to rent it. It turned out to be fuckin' funny as hell!
      So, if you've watched PULP FICTION for the 80th time now and you've worn out all your old SANFORD & SON tapes, slip NURSE BETTY in.
      Charley (Morgan Freeman) and Wesley (Chris Rock) come damn close to being the best comedy team since John Travolta and Samuel L. Jackson in PULP FICTION and Redd Foxx and Lamont Wilson in SANFORD & SON.
      They play two hit men tracking Betty Sizemore (Renée Zellweger) across country to L.A. Betty's husband Dale, unbeknownst to her, had stolen a car full of drugs and Betty is driving that car, with the drugs still in it, to California. However, before her departure, she witnesses the murder of her asshole husband by Charly and Wesley as they try in vain to get him to give up the location of the car, which he never does because Wesley jumps the gun and shoots his ass dead.
      In a state of shock after seeing the murder, Betty blends that shocking reality with her favorite soap opera called "A Reason To Love." After arriving in L.A. Betty actually stumbles her way into meeting the lead actor on "A Reason To Love", George McCord, a.k.a. Dr. David Ravel (Greg Kinnear). She ends up working on the soap opera with him.
      Meanwhile, Charly becomes more and more infatuated with Betty and drives Wesley up the wall.
      The best lines in the movie come from Charly and Wesley. They are: (Charly) "Man, we're in purgatory." (Wesley) "Worse! We're in Texas!"; (Charly) "Man, you're dancin' 'round Mr. Bojangles." (Wesley) "What? Is she too poised to pee?"; (Charly) "She stands for something." (Wesley) "Please, pleazzze! Tell me what she stands for? She's a dumb bitch from Kansas."
      I hope Freeman and Rock team up again in some future comedies. Freeman is the straight man Rock has been needing all this time to work his humor off of. --- Todd Taylor, May 9, 2001.

FAHRENHEIT 451 (1966): George W. Bush, our newly 'elected' President, just cut 100% of the funding for The Reading is Fundamental program. The officially reported literacy rate of the United States is 85% but I suspect the real figure is much lower. These days you're considered literate if you can read and comphrehend the word STOP written on traffic signs.
      Ol' Georgie Boy may be taking the first steps towards what we were warned about in Ray Bradbury's sci-fi novel FAHRENHEIT 451 and the film based on it.
      FAHRENHEIT 451 is the temperature at which books burn. The plot of this rather mediocre movie is that at some point in the future all written material is banned and firemen burn books instead of putting out fires. This is because everything in the future is fireproof --- except for books, of course. The story centers around Montag (Oskar Werner), a fireman with a conscience, and his pill-popping and boob tube-addicted wife, Clarisse (Julie Christie).
      Can anyone say Prozac, Effexor, SURVIVOR or JERRY SPRINGER?
      Although this movie is dated and hokey in a lot ways it stills hammers the condition of modern American life right on the nail's head --- a nation controlled by t.v. and drugs, perscribed and illicit. At one point Clarisse overdoses and the paramedics give her a blood transfusion right there at her house. I'm sure this actually goes on in Hollywood and New York these days if you have the money to pay for it. Rumor has it that Rolling Stones guitar player Keith Richards has blood transfusions every few years to clean out his doped up system.
      However, Montag, as in all totalitarian tales, becomes dispondent over his structured lifestyle and breaks away from the herd and starts reading. His reading frenzy is initially sparked by a woman, Linda (who is also played by Julie Christie), he meets at a bus stop while going back and forth from work.
      In the end, predictably, Montag is found out by the authorities. They announce on t.v. that Montag is a wanted criminal so him and Linda (he dumps the morose Clarisse) flee to a reading society outside of their city. It's located way out in the deep woods. Everyone in this reading society has to memorize a book so that if its last copy is burned it will still be on record in someone's mind and can be read back outloud to other society members. They also use their memorized book's title as their name.
      There is one major inconsistency in the movie and that is if these characters live in a non-reading culture how did they learn to read in the first place? Underground reading schools maybe? Or a READING FOR DUMMIES book?
      Actually, one thing modern America has shown us is that reading is not something our citizens have an innate longing for --- someone has to turn you on to it. I know that all through elementary school I didn't give a shit about reading. I put in just enough effort to maintain a C average. However, when I got into high school a stoner kid I knew was reading 1984 by George Orwell and told me what it was about. I immediately read it and have been a consistent book reader ever since.
      Bottom line: Reading teaches you how to think for yourself.
      Unfortunately, that's one thing a society that's based on mass consumerism and the 40-hour work week doesn't want its citizens doing. They, the corporations who control what our government tells us to do, want you to immediately go to McDonald's and get those Happy Meals when you see the t.v. ads or buy that new high definition t.v. or talk to your doctor immediately about getting some Viagra and fucking like a bunny rabbit to produce even more Consumption Creatures.
      America doesn't burn books ONLY because it doesn't have to. All it has to do is put J. Lo's ass, soap operas and various reality t.v. shows on 24/7/365 and 99% of America's citizens will throw their books in a dusty corner somewhere and get lost in people's lives that are far more exciting than their own mediocre existences.
      And a script of Prozac doesn't hurt either. --- Todd Taylor, May 4, 2001.

RATED X (2000): Well, I've relapsed again. I'm just a video junkie, man. Anyway, I woke up late Saturday morning and made my way down to the local BLOCKBUSTER.
      This time the place was empty and I had the choice of any movies I wanted --- ha ha ha!
      I looked through all the new releases along the wall and found this obscure movie I hadn't heard of --- RATED X, starring brothers Emileo Estevez and Charlie Sheen as San Francisco's notorious smut practioneers, the Mitchell brothers.
      I think Estevez and Sheen are much better actors than they've been given credit for. Sure, they've made some stinkbombs but who hasn't? They've made some great movies, too. Who else could you see playing the smartass punk kid Otto in REPO MAN but Estevez? Or Sheen as the I'll-do-anything-for-success stockbroker Bud Fox in WALL STREET?
      In RATED X (unlike their collaboration in the goofy and plain dumb MEN AT WORK), Martin Sheen's sons team up to make a good movie about two creeps. It's not a great movie but a very good one. The brothers do themselves proud with this one, which made it's premeire on cable's Showtime channel last year.
      RATED X is the story of Jim and Artie Mitchell. They both start out in the underworld with their father, a loan shark. They helped him collect past due debts. Soon their father urges them to get an education and Jim heeds the call by becoming a film student at a San Francisco college in the late '60s.
      He filmed all the naked hippie chicks dancing and making free love at Haight & Ashbury and soon decided to start his own porn movie business. Just as he's getting started, after receiving some financial help from his dad who smartly warns him to "watch out for Johnny Law", Artie shows up after one of his drug and alcohol binges and Jim immediately makes him his partner.
      During the next 20 years their business flourishes and they become millionaires. But Artie also slips deeper and deeper into alcohol and drug addiction. Jim manages to straighten up on his own but Artie continues down his path of self-destruction.
      The movie begins and ends the same way with Jim chain smoking and listening to Artie's insane rantings and death threats on his answering machine. Finally, Jim goes over to Artie's house with their father's old rifle and kills Artie. Oddly enough, Jim is only charged with voluntary manslaughter and serves just three years in San Quentin.
      To this day the real life Jim Mitchell still runs the O'Farrell Theatre, his infamous strip club he started with his late brother.
      You've heard the old expression that the truth is stranger than fiction. RATED X proves that point beyond a shadow of a doubt. --- Todd Taylor, May 1, 2001.

STEAL THIS MOVIE! (2000): STEAL THIS MOVIE! is an appropriate title for this stink bomb. Steal it then throw it away.
      I picked up this movie because about six months ago I read an excellent biography of the hippie/anti-war activist Abbie Hoffman called STEAL THIS DREAM: ABBIE HOFFMAN AND THE COUNTERCULTURAL REVOLUTION IN AMERICA. Unfortunately, Brue Grahman's screenplay for STEAL THIS MOVIE! failed to transfer to the screen a lot of what made the book so good.
      At times STEAL THIS MOVIE! can't decide whether it wants to be a documentary or a docudrama.
      I think a documentary would have been much better choice.
      Veteran character actor Vincent D'Onofrio does a good job playing the spirited, passionate Hoffman. But stand up comic turned actress Janeane Garofalo was simply the wrong choice for the role of Anita, Hoffman's long-suffering wife. Garofalo should stick to playing whinning, modern day uptight bitches --- that's what she is and that's what she's good at playing in movies.
      In short, the book STEAL THIS DREAM gives you a political and philosophical basis for the strange and absurd actions of the hippies.
      This movie does not.
      STEAL THIS MOVIE! is much more interested in being eye candy for stoner high school kids than telling a real story of a real man who stood up against the system and suffered greatly for it.
      Steal this movie? Please!!--- Todd Taylor, May 1, 2001.

NETWORK (1976): "The American public has turned on, shot up and fucked themselves limp and nothing seems to help."
      If t.v. ever had a profit it was Paddy Chayefsky, writer of the Oscar-winning screenplay for NETWORK. Ever wonder how t.v. went from THE BRADY BUNCH to JERRY SPRINGER, from ADAM 12 to COPS, from PERRY MASON to COURT TV, from MATCH GAME to SURVIVOR?
      NETWORK answers that question very simply: Ratings. And in t.v. good ratings=$$$.
      NETWORK is the story of aged t.v. news anchor Howard Bealle (played by the late Peter Finch in an Oscar-winning role) who gets fired when his ratings take a dive. Pissed off at his dismissal, he announces on the air that he's going to kill himself on his last scheduled show.
      Immediately, Bealle's ratings go through the roof and a young producer from the entertainment division, played by Faye Dunaway, takes over Bealle's program.
      She advertises Bealle as "The Mad Prophet of The Airwaves" and his tagline ("I'm mad as hell and I'm not gonna take it anymore.") becomes a nationwide catch phrase.
      However, when Bealle starts telling people "life is bullshit" and verbally attacks CCA, the company taking over the network he works for, his ratings plummet and he's killed on t.v. by an assassin before he can damage CCA's reputation even further.
      His murder is looked upon as nothing more than a change in programming.
      Throughout the years NETWORK has spawned it's immitators. For example, Mad Eddie Childs, who had a long-running consumer rights radio program in Dallas, used Bealle's catch phrase as his tagline. There have been dozens like him throughout the country, mostly on radio. Even Howard Stern's anything goes stream of consciousness radio program owes a lot to this movie.
      In short, NETWORK helped knock down a lot of the barriers that t.v., and the media in general, used to have and opened it up to more diverse programming. Some people think this has gone too far but as long as you're watching the networks are making money and that's all that really counts to them.
      Live Death Row executions will probably be the next big trend. So don't touch that dial. --- Todd Taylor, April 24, 2001.

FIGHT CLUB (1999): My name is Todd and I'm a videoholic.
      I've become a Blockbuster addict. In the last week I've rented 10 movies from there. The reason for this video watching frenzy is because I got my cable cut off and my t.v.'s reception is shit without it.
      That just leaves the VCR for me.
      FIGHT CLUB stars Brad Pitt and Edward Norton and is based on a novel of the same name by Chuck Palahnuik. Norton plays Jack, a claims investigator for a large automaker who develops insomnia due to jetting arounding the country investigating car crashes. The combination of insominia and his excruciatingly dull job and life lead him to the modern panacea of all modern problems --- 12 step programs.
      Jack finds himself attending support groups for every disease known to mankind using various aliases. He soon becomes indoctrinated into the various programs and learns to cry on a man with enlarged breasts (played by Meat Loaf) and this temporarily cures his insomnia problem.
      Jack comments, "A baby never slept better."
      Sleep, however, can be easy when you've given up reality for a total fantasy world, which 12 step programs and other cults are good at creating.
      Then a sexpot, Marla (Helena Bonham Carter), comes along and disturbs his tranquility. In the past, Jack's interest in her would have been called just plain old sexual attraction. However, in this politically correct 12-Step Age Jack cannot even admit his sexual attraction to her to himself. He fears rejection. He fears taking risks.
      And, as Tyler (Pitt) puts it so eloquently, Jack's behavior is typical of "a male from the generation of men who have been raised by women."
      Jack meets Tyler on another one of his many boring airplane rides and they end up starting their own program called Fight Club. This is a club where guys get together and do bare knuckles boxing in order to affirm their manhoods, to try to stop being such big pussies. After fighting several times and getting black and blue all over Jack gains so much self-esteem he ends up standing up to his boss and even blackmailing him.
      Later, the Fight Club that Jack and Tyler founded ends up becoming a nationwide organization and Tyler changes the activity from bare knuckles fighting to terrorism. That explains the beginning of the movie where we first meet our two protaganists. Tyler is shown shoving a gun barrel into Jack's mouth as Jack tries to prevent Tyler from blowing up some credit card company buildings.
      This movie is very surreal. However, I think it makes some very important points. Yeah, I was totally confused about the movie, too, as you might be now if you've seen it only once, until I watched it a 2nd and 3rd time and started piecing stuff together, like the fact that there were two guys in the show who were literally held down and threatened with castration and then there were Pitt's speeches about being a generation of men raised by women. I put those two things together to mean that modern society has pretty much psychologically castrated the modern male.
      FIGHT CLUB is one of those movies you have to think of symbolically and not literally.
      First of all it is an allegory of how all people struggle within themselves --- the good and the bad sides, the angel on one shoulder and the devil on the other. It's also an allegory of a couple where one person is in recovery and the other person is actively using alcohol/drugs. At one point Marla, who ends up in relationship with Jack, describes him as "Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Asshole."
      Secondly, this movie makes some very important social commentary about the current state of American society. The commentary is that we've become so brainwashed by political correctness and 12 step progams that most of us have become docile and unthinking slaves to the corporate/consumer state and are content to live out the dull and drab lives mapped out for us by the state.
      Think about it. When was the last time you saw a bar fight? Or any fight for that matter that wasn't on t.v.? --- Todd Taylor, April 16, 2001.

BLOW: It seems like the entertainment press never really blares this out like they should but I'm telling you right now: Johnny Depp is one of America's finest actors. When he's up there on the big screen you're not thinking, "That's Johnny Depp up there!" Instead, you're convinced it's the real Ed Wood (ED WOOD) or the real Hunter S. Thompson (FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS) you're watching. Depp is so good at disappearing into his characters that you forget about him and believe the character he's portraying is really real. Of course, Depp should have won an Oscar a long time ago for playing the scissor-fingered weirdo in Tim Burton's EDWARD SCISSORHANDS.
      From the list of roles he's played it's obvious he's an actor who doesn't play it safe by taking parts with obvious commercial and audience appeal (think Harrison Ford in the INDIANA JONES movies and Bruce Willis in the DIE HARDs) and very little demands on one's acting abilities. Instead, Depp enjoys challenges. He likes to earn his money by constantly testing himself and his abundant talent.
      He does so again in BLOW, in which he gives us a true-to-life account of George Jung's incredible drug-smuggling career, from his early 20s straight into his old age (his makeup during the movie's last scene is tough to look at but the real Jung is that fucking ugly and wrinkled).
      The movie is based on Bruce Porter's autobiography of Jung, Blow: How a Smalltown Boy Made $100 Million With the Medellin Cocaine Cartel and Lost It All. The subtitle of the book tells you all you need to know about the movie because that's exactly what you see on the big screen.
      If there's ever a drug-smuggling Hall of Fame Jung will no doubt be one of the initial inductees. The dude, still locked up in federal prison for his crimes until the year 2015, single-handedly created the supply line between America's insatiable drug (ab)users and Mexico's pot syndicates and Colombia's cocaine cartels.
      In other words, Jung was the Henry Ford of the drug trade.
      In the annals of American and International criminal infamy, Jung is a big shot. The motherfucker had balls bigger than Goliath's (could you walk through airport security with two suitcases full of coke without shitting your pants?) .
      Depp plays Jung not as some rock'n roll-like drug megastar who parties and fucks all the bitches he can fuck but as a guy who simply didn't want to end up like his beloved father, a life-long law-abiding daily grinder who worked the 40-hours-a-week thing for 40 years before dying of cancer.
      Jung wanted to enjoy living not be stuck in an office and watch his life pass him by. Hell, who hasn't dreamed that dream? But Jung made his dream come true and all it cost him was his freedom...and his family. Some things come cheap (such as sex) but some things come with a high price tag (illegal drug dealing). Jung was always willing to pay the price, however, and he has: he's spent a very large portion of his life in prison on possession and intent to sell convictions.
      That is what BLOW is about. And it's message, that if you get into the drug trade your life will NOT be any better than doing the 40-hour-a-week thing, is so subtlely oblivious observers might not catch it.
      This movie does what the extremely overrated, technically flawed and WAY overblown TRAFFIC couldn't. BLOW shows you, illustrates it through Jung's troubles, that going into the drug trade is not a good idea. TRAFFIC tried in vain to TELL you drugs are bad. We already know that. What most don't know is the human toll drugs have on a person and the people who love them, their friends and family. And that should be the anti-drug message: getting into the drug trade is a losing proposition. You'll not only lose your freedom (you'll get caught eventually and go to jail, if not killed by your fellow drug-smugglers), you'll lose your family (Jung's real life daughter has never gone to visit him in jail and his wife has long since divorced him) and you'll lose your perspective on what life is about.
      In the film, Jung's dad, played wonderfully by Ray Liotta, tells young George, after he loses his plumbing business to the creditors and finds himself and his family broke once again, that life's "not about the money." But Jung the Younger didn't listen to his old man.
      He should have. --- Robert W. Howington, April 12, 2001.