The Dumbest Generation cares little for history books, civic principles, foreign affairs, comparative religions, and serious media and art, and it knows less. Careening through their formative years, they don’t catch the knowledge bug, and tradition might as well be a foreign word.

This is a harsh and oversimplified critique of a generation, but I think it explains the Twilight obsession. These kids today know nothing of Stoker’s Dracula, Murnau’s Nosferatu, or Whedon’s Buffyverse. Perhaps that is why they don’t care how the Twilight saga robs and corrupts over a century of great art. And they seem to miss the fact completely that the character of Bella is completely dependent on men for happiness. She doesn’t exist except as the object of desire of random scumbag guys. (I mean, what kind of jerk is teaching a girl he likes to ride a motorcycle and doesn’t have her wear a helmet or at least ride alongside her?) Bella is one of the worst role models for young women that could possibly exist. Maybe if they made her a syphilitic prostitute running a Ponzi scheme it would be worse, but if Bella were a syphilitic prostitute running a Ponzi scheme, New Moon might have been an interesting movie.

As it stands, New Moon is an abomination. It is a 130-minute affirmation of the antiquated notion of a woman existing in entirely in relation to, and under the protection of, a man. Misogyny aside, New Moon is also a continuation of the Twilight’s saga watering down of plots and characters from Buffy the Vampire Slayer. The basic premise of the saga — the new girl at school, who meets a sexy brooding vampire and is challenged by the difficulties of the human-vampire relationship — is straight out of Buffy. But it lacks the tragedy of the Buffy-Angel relationship, as Bella is not a Slayer, so she does not exist for the sole purpose of killing vampires. Bella is just a sad little girl with no self-confidence and no self-respect. Whereas Buffy is the strongest girl on the planet, Bella is one of the weakest. She has no redeeming qualities, nothing to admire, nothing to respect, making her an awful protagonist in an equally awful movie.

In addition to robbing and diluting one of the main plot points of Buffy, New Moon also borrows other aspects of the series: haunting dreams (Buffy dreams about being attacked by the Master), packs of kids who behave like animals (Oz as a werewolf, the kids from The Pack episode), and the crazy evil vampire chick who has a history with the sexy brooding vampire (Drusilla). There isn’t an original plot line in the entire movie.

To make matters worse, the actors of New Moon have no talent. Buffy wasn’t exactly a course in Shakespearean acting, but holy crap the New Moon actors are dreadful. I don’t know if the chick who plays Bella has a breathing disorder, but her acting style features a wide variety of unnatural pauses. The guy who played Edward, while admittedly a dashing young man, also has an incredibly blocky face. If someone tried to make an 8-bit video game version of a sexy vampire, the character sprites would look exactly like the dude who plays Edward. When the shirtless werewolf dude is the best actor in the movie, you know you’ve got a problem. (For Internets fun, Google Taylor Lautner alpaca (dude looks just like an alpaca))

In short, New Moon is a downright despicable movie. The “happy ending” is that Bella gets to become a vampire. Hooray! Selling your soul and your humanity to get closer to a sexy guy! What a great message for the young people. To think that there is a generation of girls who look up to this tripe–who see it as romantic, rather than a paean to dysfunctional and abusive relationships–makes me weep for humanity.

There has been a lot of criticism of Stieg Larsson as a writer—he never uses contractions, every seven words there’s a reference to coffee or sex, and in The Girl Who Stirred the Hornet’s Nest, every female character seems to be wearing the same blandly described red jacket. Despite his limitations as a wordsmith, Larsson’s narration is what makes his novels more than run-of-the-mill airport crime fiction. His Dickensian political and social digressions and use of multiple points of view make the novels great. Without the narration—particularly without the ability to regularly go inside the minds of multiple characters, Alfredson’s film lacks the additional dimension of greatness that the novels have.

Because the film rarely enters the minds of the characters (there are a couple of Lisbeth flashbacks), many of the characters don’t have the same depth in the film as they do in the novel. We never really get a chance to see the struggle between logic and passion that rages inside Lisbeth.  She hardly says anything, which often makes her appear dim-witted, rather than the taciturn genius that she is in the novel. Niedermann, the deranged giant who feels no pain, is just a robotic thug in the film; his visions and paranoid thoughts are completely eliminated. Also eliminated is the role of the police as narrators. The story in the film is told entirely through the point of view of Blomkvist and Salander, which makes sense, although it will be interesting to see if Alfredson continues this approach in The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest, where the police play a much larger role in telling the story.

Even though Alfredson fails to capture the entirety of the novel, he has still made an enjoyable film. Michael Nyqvist is perfect as Blomkvist, alternating between smarmy, righteous, and protective. All the other characters are faithfully portrayed. I particularly enjoyed the actor who played Holger Palmgren’s performance, and the filmmakers did a wonderful job with the makeup to depict Zala’s burn wounds. Like the novel, the film gets a little ridiculous and unbelievable at the end, although Alfredson did a fine job adapting Larsson disappointing cop-out of an ending.

The Girl Who Played With Fire, while not as good as Alfredson’s The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (which did a great job adapting a much less cinematically-inclined novel), is still worth a watch. The pace of the film makes it feel much shorter than two hours, much like the pace of the novels make them seem much shorter than 500 pages. Also, there’s not nearly as much butt-rape as in the first film. Whether that’s good or bad is really a matter of personal preference. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give The Girl Who Played With Fire 3 tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.

I won’t bother going into too much details as to the plot of the film.  All you really need to know is that George Clooney plays a man who, at the start of the film, is happy.  He enjoys his thankless job and his brutal travel schedule.  He is that rare person who is truly content with life.  But being content with life is not good enough for this film.  Oh no, it turns out that George Clooney is actually an empty shell of a man, living a life devoid of meaning.   Why is this so?  Because George Clooney is single.  Because George Clooney doesn’t have a wife, 2.5 children, a house with a white picket fence, or a life that resembles the cover of The Saturday Evening Post.  Sure, he’s happy, but according to writer/director/nepotism beneficiary Jason Reitman, being happy isn’t good enough.  In the world of Up in the Air, true happiness is secondary to social conformity.

Now some of you might be saying, “But Shawn, what’s wrong with having a loving family?”  While there’s nothing wrong with wanting to marry and raise children, the film posits that the family life is the only life worth living.  There’s even a montage of the unemployed telling how their families are the only things that keep them going.  Now I don’t have a wife or family, nor do I ever intend to, and I find it insulting that a filmmaker would imply that those without the skills to keep their jobs are somehow better than me, simply because I don’t have children and they do.  Just because I choose a solitary life, rather than overpopulating the earth with a quiverfull of gangly, ugly, nerd children, does not make me less of a man.  Nor does it mean that my life is empty or devoid of meaning and happiness.

Up in the Air is a direct slap in the face to me and others like me. To imply that happiness comes from family, rather than from doing what you love, is an ignorant, narrow-minded, and archaic way of looking at the world.  It’s 2010, we have only two more years until the Mayans rise from the grave to destroy us all, so why are the makers of Up in the Air, still clinging to Leave it to Beaver-era ideals?

Even with the looking-down-and-smiling charisma of George Clooney, Up in the Air has no appeal for me.  Some might like the idea of a happy man having that happiness snatched away from him because he can’t conform to clichéd notions of personal fulfillment, but I don’t.  On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Up in the Air the dreaded Evil tiny head of Sergei Eisenstein.

I rent movies from Blockbuster. I know everyone is canceling their Blockbuster online memberships, but I’m sticking with them until they stop allowing me to exchange movies. And don’t try to sing the praises of Netflix and their online movie watching. That only works for people who aren’t pretentious assholes. It’s not an option for me.
So, I go into Blockbuster to exchange a movie, hoping to rent the Aqua Teen Hunger Force movie. But that was out-of-stock. I browsed through the other movies, looking for an amusing comedy. The best I could find was Pucked, starring Bon Jovi and Estella Warren. Unfortunately, due to the realities of renting at Blockbuster, I could not rent that movie.When you rent a movie from Blockbuster, you take the DVD case to the counter, letting the Blockbuster employee see the cover of the movie you are renting. This means that the employees will judge me based on the quality of the DVD cases I present them. Or at least that’s what I assume they do. So any sort of zany sex comedy is out of the question. I will not have the employees at Blockbuster thinking that I am a lonely perv who rents titty movies at 11 AM on a Monday. As you can see, I had no choice but to rent The Ex, and it is a decision I will regret for the rest of my natural life.

I like Zach Braff. I would gladly watch feature films based on World’s Most Giant Doctor or Dr. Acula. And since I often claim that Arrested Development is the fourth-greatest television program of all time, it’s really no surprise that I also like Jason Bateman. I do not care for Amanda Peet. She has never made an movie that’s been anywhere close to decent, and I doubt she ever will. She is a bland, female version of Dabney Coleman, but without The Man With One Red Shoe to redeem her career. If you have a child, friend, or loved one who wants to attend Columbia University, just remember that Amanda Peet went to Columbia. Do you really want your child, friend, or loved one to go to a school that was willing to matriculate and graduate the likes of Amanda Peet?

But enough about Amanda Peet. The Ex is a terrible movie for many reasons other than Amanda Peet. Well, that’s not entirely true. The movie is terrible because it is based entirely around the assumptions that Amanda Peet is worth fighting over and that all handicapped people are complete dicks. Basically, Amanda Peet is responsible for 50% of the awfulness of The Ex.

A brief plot synopsis: Amanda Peet and Zach Braff have a baby. Amanda Peet stays at home with the baby. Zach Braff loses his job, then takes a job with Amanda Peet’s dad’s company, where he works with Jason Bateman, who had a relationship with Amanda Peet. Also, Jason Bateman is in a wheelchair, has a giant wang, and is a complete dick about everything. And that’s pretty much the whole movie. Essentially, The Ex is a shitty Farrelly brothers movie. “But Shawn,” you might ask, “How can something be even shittier than a Farrelly brothers movie?”  Trust me, The Ex makes the Farrelly brothers look the Lumière brothers. The Ex is an awful movie.  There is nothing even remotely funny and the talents of Donal Logue are completely wasted.  But it features a cameo from the guy who played Bob (of Bob and Cedric on Seinfeld, so that’s worth something.  On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give The Ex one-half of a tiny head of Sergei Eisenstein.

At the start of the movie, Captain Jack Sparrow is in Davy Jones’ locker, so Barbossa, Will, and Keira Knightley have to go rescue him. But before they can do that, they have to go to Singapore and talk with Chow Yun-Fat. They need to know how to get inside Davy Jones’ Locker and since Chow Yun-Fat is Asian, he naturally knows all the mystical secrets to the universe. After Singapore, they sail to Davy Jones’ Locker, rescue Jack and then they have to sail back out in the real world again. Then they have to sail to Shipwreck Cove to meet with the Pirate Lords. (I could probably write a dissertation on the ridiculousness of this Pirate Lords bullshit. First of all, both Jack and Barbossa are Pirate Lords, but they both served on the same crew. It always seemed that Barbossa’s mutiny was a fairly recent event in the time line of the films, and he had to have spent the bulk of the time after the mutiny hunting down the cursed Aztec gold, giving him very little time to establish himself as a Pirate Lord with enough clout to summon and moderate the Brethren Court. So it would seem that Jack and Barbossa would have to have been Pirate Lords at the same time, serving on the same ship. Why would there be two Pirate Lords on one ship? And why would two relentlessly arrogant and self-promoting men like Jack and Barbossa not once see fit to mention the fact that they are Pirate Lords? It doesn’t make a lick of sense.)

After the Pirate Lords are discovered by Davy Jones, who is being controlled by a prissy Englishman from the East India Company, everyone has to sail out into the middle of a maelstrom for the climactic showdown. Then, as an epilogue, Jack and Will, separately, sail off into the sunset. The end. Pirates of the Caribbean: At World’s End is just a bunch of people sailing from once place to another, for a variety of bullshitty reasons.

Moving on to the second Clerks moment, which come, ironically, from the original Clerks movie, when Randall questions the ethics of destroying the second Death Star. Randall’s basic argument is that by destroying the unfinished Death Star, the Rebels killed untold numbers of innocent workers, who really had no vested interest in the rebellion. That, to an extent, is something that happens in At World’s End.

The first two Pirates movies involved our beloved heroes fighting pirate ghosts and pirate fish-people, respectively. While the pirate fish-people return in At World’s End, the real enemy is the East India Company, led by a prissy Englishman and his malevolent henchman, who hide behind the human shields of rank-and-file soldiers. So instead of fighting and killing pirates, in this movie our not-so-beloved heroes are fighting and killing random sailors, who are just trying to earn an honest living making the seas safe for merchants.

And to makes matters worse, none of the characters in the film have noble causes. Barbossa wants to consolidate power and rid the seas of prissy Englishmen who attempt to hinder pirates. Keira Knightley wants to clear her own conscience. And Will is willing to sacrifice anything and anyone to rescue his deadbeat father. In fact, will goes so far as to desecrate corpses, strapping them to barrels and tossing them in the ocean, so the East India Company can follow the Black Pearl. And I’m supposed to be happy when he marries Keira Knightley in the middle of a sword fight?

Really, the only character in At World’s End who isn’t a completely selfish douche is Captain Jack Sparrow. All he wants is his ship, which is a more than reasonable request. Unfortunately, Captain Jack plays a relatively minor role in the film. He’s is really nothing more than a bargaining chip, tossed between the other characters as part of their selfish machinations. Barbossa’s monkey and the little janitor from Scrubs play more important roles than Captain Jack, which is quite pathetic.

The filmmakers seem to recognize the dearth of Captain Jack in the film, so they try to make up for it by having Jack hallucinate multiple versions of himself. This is put to good use in Davy Jones’ Locker, as Jack is essentially in purgatory, so envisioning a worthless crew of his own doppelgängers is not all that far-fetched. However, throughout the rest of the film, when Jack sees little version of himself hanging from his hair and the like, it’s a little unnecessary. Captain Jack Sparrow doesn’t seem like the type of person who regularly suffers crises of conscience.

Despite the best efforts to stuff in as much Captain Jack as possible, At World’s’ End ends up being a movie about Will Turner. After conniving and double-crossing his way through the film, Will finally proposes to and marries Keira Knightley. Then, in a predictably Shakespearean in magnitude fashion, he promptly gets himself killed, only to be revived as the new Captain of the Flying Dutchman. So, instead of devoting his life to the sexy lady who loves him and has risked her life for him on a number of occasions, Will decides he’d be better off sailing around with his accursed murderer of a father. But every ten years he gets to come back a fuck Keira Knightley for one night. And I’m supposed to like this guy? This is what passes as a tragic and bittersweet romance these days?

I’m sure that a lot of people will think that I’m blowing this out of proportion. After all, Will Turner is played by “Tony” Orlando Bloom, who is the hottness. It’s pretty much the status quo for people as handsome as “Tony” Orlando Bloom to be allowed to treat sexy ladies like shit. So even though he abandons Keira Knightley, fundamentally transforming her from wife to fuck bag, we’re still supposed to like the guy. Well I’m not going to stand for this. Keira Knightley deserves better.

The Curse of the Black Pearl was a quality flick, a ridiculous concept made enjoyable by quality performances and effects. Dead Man’s Chest was way too long and had far too much of Captain Jack mincing about trying to be silly. At World’s End is also way too long and suffers from not enough of Captain Jack mincing about trying to be silly. Barbossa, Will, and Keira Knightley do not mince about, nor are they particularly silly. And that is the fatal flaw of this film. Instead of making a triumphant end for what might arguably be the most enjoyable original film character of this young century, the filmmakers made a film stuffed full of Geoffrey Rush’s generic pirate inflections and the wooden acting of an overmatched supporting cast. Despite the presence of the little janitor from Scrubs and some tragically brief appearances by some sexy Asian ladies and Keira Knightley’s scrawny legs, At World’s End just isn’t that good of a movie. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give it two tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.

My dream in life is to lock Jennifer Love Hewitt in a cage in my basement. My favourite episode of Buffy is “Consequences,” where Angel chains Faith to a wall in his basement. In short, being that I possess none of the qualities that ladies find attractive, my ideal sexy lady is one who cannot run away.

It stands to reason that with my fondness for porn, half naked ladies, and sexy ladies chained to various objects, I would love Black Snake Moan. Sadly, we live in a world bereft of reason. I did not like Black Snake Moan. It is a half-assed mockery of everything I hold dear.

In Black Snake Moan, Christina Ricci plays a small town nymphomaniac. Her life consists of getting wasted and having sex. One night, after her boyfriend (Justin Timberlake) ships out with the National Guard, she gets really wasted, plays topless football, has sex, and then gets the shit beat out of her and is left on the side of the road. The next morning, Sam Jackson, whose wife just ran off with his brother, finds Ricci lying in the road. Wanting to help her he takes her back to his nearby farm. After asking around town, Jackson learns that Ricci is a nympho, so he decides to “cure” her evil ways by chaining her to his radiator. Basically, half the movie consists of a half-naked Christina Ricci getting boned or struggling against the chain. Sounds like a kickass flick, right? Wrong. Director Craig Brewer ruins what could be an enjoyable exploitation film by burdening the thin plot with a litany of “issue” clichés.

So, what exactly is Black Snake Moan about? Is it a ignorantly misogynistic excuse for Christina Ricci to flash her titties? Is it an emotional drama about the effects of childhood sexual abuse? Is it about redemption through religion? Or redemption through the blues?

And which character is the focus of the movie? Is it about Christina Ricci trying to become something more than a walking vagina? Is it about Sam Jackson rediscovering his faith and his music, all while wooing the mail lady from Pee-Wee’s Playhouse? And why is Justin Timberlake such a pussy? These are all questions that are raised by Black Snake Moan, but Black Snake Moan is not a very thoughtful movie. It’s two hours of Christina Ricci running around in her underpants.

Black Snake Moan is nothing but a mediocre titty flick with aspirations of being some kind of serious character drama. It is a mediocre titty flick without all the things that make mediocre titty flicks so damn enjoyable. It’s Party Camp without the sophomoric sex jokes or the dynamic talents of Jewel Shepard. It’s Not of This Earth, minus the cheesy sci-fi violence and the lovely Miss Traci Lords. Even worse, it’s a mediocre titty starring a chick who’s had a breast reduction. That’s not how titty flicks are supposed to work.

Now, I know some of you will be saying, “But Shawn, Christina is so tiny, her titties would have given her back pains, like Punky Brewster.” Back pains? I get back pains from just thinking about a sexy lady willingly reducing her Morrissey-given titties. It feels like getting kicked in the back by a centaur. Not a horse. Not a mule. Not even a mountain goat. A fucking centaur. The pain that breast reductions cause me is so intense, it could only be metaphorically inflicted by a mythical creature.

Despite whatever desire you might have to see Christina Ricci’s titties, despite whatever love you have for the acting talents of Justin Timberlake, despite whatever fondness you might have for the Gibson ES-335 guitar, you should not watch Black Snake Moan. It is a disappointing waste of two hours. And really, for a movie that features a half-naked nymphomaniac, there’s really not a whole lot of nudity. It’s not worth it as a blues movie. It’s not worth it as a drama. And it’s not worth it as a titty movie. In short, Black Snake Moan is worthless. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Black Snake Moan the dread Evil Tiny Head of Sergei Eisenstein.

Piracy warnings aside, Bottom of the Ninth is a great documentary. Director Chuck Braverman, who helped bring us TV classics such as “Sledge Hammer!”, “Baywatch,” and “Hercules: The Legendary Journeys”, documents the historic season of an independent league baseball team. But this is not just any independent league baseball team have just any historic season, it’s the Somerset Patriots of the Atlantic League, the home team of the county where I used to live in New Jersey. I attended a handful of Patriots’ games over the years, but mostly to see Rickey Henderson and Jose Lima play for the Newark Bears. I never made any effort to follow or root for the Patriots, but Bottom of the Ninth provides a fascinating, albeit brief, view of life on an independent league baseball team.

For those of you who don’t follow baseball much, independent league teams are not the same thing as minor league teams. Minor league teams are affiliated with a major league franchise. Independent league teams have not such affiliation. It’s very easy to look down on teams like the Somerset Patriots. In fact, it seems like everyone who attends independent league games thinks of the teams and players as something of a joke; a bunch of scrubs who couldn’t even make it in the minors. You sit there in the stands and wonder how these players could delude themselves into thinking that they have talent, that they may still have a chance of making it to “The Show.” And that’s really the focus of Bottom of the Ninth, as most of the players featured had some major league experience.

Although I attended a few Patriots games, I knew nothing about the players, mostly because the team makes no effort to market the players, or even the games. It’s all about the experience of taking the family to a baseball game for a reasonable price and getting the kiddies some Captain Underpants swag. But the Patriots have their fair share of interesting players. A pitcher who made it to the majors, only to have his career derailed by the strike. A player who set the professional baseball record of 66 consecutive stolen bases. A player who was promoted to the AA Birmingham Barons in the White Sox organization, only to be immediately demoted to make room for Micheal Jordan. (As a consolation, Mike gave him some sneakers.) And the one player I actually remember, the tiny DH Micheal Warner, who, when standing on a stool, is barely taller than most of his teammates.

The interviews with these players are suspect to the usual athlete cliches: taking things one day at a time, playing for the love of the game, the importance of team camaraderie and the like. The players all seem like fairly bright guys, well-spoken, with a realistic understanding of their place in the baseball world. They all want to get another chance in the big leagues, but most seem resigned to the fact that this will probably never happen. The only exception to this is little Mikey Warner, who goes around making “motivational” speeches in the locker room of the “Let’s go fuck up those fucking mother fuckers!” variety.

By far, the best thing about Bottom of the Ninth is the game footage. Seeing manager Sparky Lyle smoke in the dugout during a game or pitching coach John “The Count” Montefusco talk about how he loves to bet on horses or how no teams wanted to hire him, just because he was accused of rape, spousal abuse and 18 other felony counts, brought back so many memories. I got chills when I gazed upon the iconic facade of historic Commerce Bank Ballpark. I stood and saluted when I saw the majestic majesty of General Admission’s tri-corner hat. I wept when I saw the Patriots’ victory parade roll past the Somerset Hotel, the classiest place in all downtown Somerville. If you’re not moved by such images, either you’re not human or you’ve never lived in Central Jersey.

Although it’s only 50 minutes long, Bottom of the Ninth provides a lifetime of insight into independent league baseball. What I once thought was a joke, I now respect as a legitimate form of sports entertainment. I expect the film to have the same affect on anyone who witnesses its depiction of the Patriots’ historic season (they clinched a playoff spot by the All-Star break) and the Shakespearean in magnitude championship series comeback against Pete “Blinky, Pinky, and Clyde” Incaviglia and the hated Newark Bears.

Lacking in the documentary is some information about the military career of mascot General Admission. He looks very young to be a Revolutionary War general. There’s also nothing about Bobby B’s Bar-B-Que stand, which provided the best pulled pork sandwich in all of Somerset County, which is really saying something, as Somerset County is the pork sandwich capital of the Tri-State area. But I suppose that those things go against the primary focus of Bottom of the Ninth. The documentary is about the players and coaches, not the wacky mascots or delicious concessions.

Bottom of the Ninth is the type of film that makes me want to go out in the 100 degree summer heat and root for the local independent league team. I hope that all you idiots will get a chance to see it and then also choose to support your local independent or minor league baseball team. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Bottom of the Ninth five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.

But I’m not going to judge 300 based on the fading relevance of a once-great theater experience. Instead, I’ll judge the film based on its highly unoriginal qualities.

Let me start off by saying that 300 is a beautiful looking film. The cinematography, makeup, special effects and the like are all top notch. Just like they were in Gladiator, Lord of the Rings and the Cinemax series The Erotic Traveler. Basically, if you’ve seen any or all of these movies, you’ve pretty much seen 300.

Like Gladiator, 300 features a badass main character fighting for something bigger than himself and augments such fighting with pithy and inspiring bravado. There are also a bunch of scenes about politics and fields of grain that really slow the movie down.

Like Lord of the Rings, there is an army making a stand against ridiculous odds, complete with two ancillary characters trading quips and insults as they try to outdo each other on the field of battle. There’s even a Gollum character, who follows and eventually betrays the fellowship.

Like The Erotic Traveler, there are couple of softcore porn scenes featuring skinny women with perky nipples that have little to do with the actual story. And don’t give me any of that bullshit about the oracle chick being essential, as her prophecy dictates that the full Spartan force cannot march against Xerxes. That might be true, but it’s no reason to have a slow motion scene of a drugged-up, barely pubescent-looking girl dancing around with her nipples threatening to poke some dude’s eyes out. That’s just exploitative trash designed to appeal to the jerkoff meth addicts in the audience. For those of us who came to see the Spartans struggle against ridiculous odds, such sex scenes are a little awkward and uncomfortable. There is a time and a place for porn, and 300 did not need to have such gratuitous sex and nudity. (I can’t believe I just spoke out against titties, but it just didn’t feel right watching the softcore scenes of 300. But that could have been because the kid sitting two seats down from me was like 8, and apparently there by himself. That’s a little weird.)

As for the action sequences, well those were pretty damn good. Or at least they were as good as I expected them to be. The problem is that director Zack Synder (yes, the Zack Snyder) never really makes it seem as if the Spartans are in any danger. They kick ass until they are betrayed by Spartan Gollum , then they basically make a pompous show of letting themselves be slaughtered. 300 should be about the struggle of a relative few against impossible odds, but it’s really about a bunch of dudes in short-shorts fighting for couple of days and then saying, “Aww, fuck it.” It’s kind of disappointing.

You know what else is disappointing? The voice-over narration. Like many modern narrations (see my Awesome Movie Review of Domino) the narration of 300 is apparently for the benefit of the blind. When not talking about how totally fucking badass Spartans are (which could probably be discerned from the whooping they give the Persians (I mean that one kid killed a fucking rhino with one toss of his spear)), the narration is repeating lines of dialogue that have just been spoken or otherwise describing the obvious. I like the way Snyder made the narrator a diegetic part of the story, but it would have been better suited as a simple framing story, rather than a full-blown narration.

Since the release of 300, there’s been a lot written about the politics of the film. In particular, some Iranians took issue with what they saw as a bias against Persians. Nothing could be further from the truth. If anything, 300 is a pro-Persian movie.

Sure, the Greeks win at the end, and the Spartans are clearly superior ass-kicking machines, but the images of the Persian lifestyle are too intoxicating to resist. Why would anyone want to side with the Spartans, who kill children and force them to fight each other, the Athenians, who have sex with children, or the Arcadians , who are apparently the leather-clad gimps of ancient Greece, when the Persians have elephants and harems of slutty, mutilated women and trannies? It’s a no-brainer . Why would I side with a bunch of loser Spartans? They don’t have elephants, which means no elephant rides. The culture without elephant rides is clearly the inferior culture, if such elephant-less savagery could even be called culture.

The one anti-Persian element in 300 is the dude with swords for hands. I’m sure you’ve seen him in the trailer. You would think that a giant with swords for hands would come in handy on the battlefield, but for some odd reason, the Persians use him as an executioner. How hard is it to cut off the head of a bound general? Not very, I would assume. Having a dude with swords for hands is a little bit of overkill. And I’m no expert in the field of ancient medicine, but I’m pretty sure that Persians would have gone through a lot of trouble to dismember a giant and replace his arms with swords. I don’t care how advanced your culture is, that’s not something you get right on the first try. So, it would stand to reason that using the sword-arm dude as an executioner is a serious waste of resources. That dude needs to be out chopping people up, not standing around waiting for someone to earn the displeasure of Xerxes. But other than that, the Persians seem like pretty cool guys. Better than those dickhead Spartans, that’s for damn sure.

I should have mentioned this earlier, but I’ve never read the comic book version of 300. Some of what I’ve criticized here might be the product of a poorly-made comic, rather than a poorly-made movie. But I don’t care. Taking the derivative content of one medium and transferring it to another, more prestigious, medium is inexcusable. Frank Miller is absolved from the mistakes of Zack Snyder, but as writer-director of 300, Snyder must answer for the flaws he willingly brought over from the comic book. So no bitching about that in the comments

On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give 300 one and a half tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein. I love the look of the movie, it’s perfectly suited to the over-the-top grandeur that any film about the Battle of Thermopylae should posses. Unfortunately, the film doesn’t capture the epic nature of the battle, at least not in any way the distinguishes it from any other epic sword-fighting movie. Although I will give it credit for showing the superiority of the spear as a weapon. It always bother me the spears suck in all role-playing games. But that’s neither here nor there. If you’re interested in the Battle of Thermopylae, Amazon is selling Herotodus’s The Histories for $8, which is three bucks less than I paid to see 300.

Like Jack Bauer in 24, Hanzo Itami is a cop who plays by his own set of rules. This becomes evident in the opening scene, where Hanzo refuses to sign a blood oath and engages in a yelling match with his superiors. Now I don’t know all that much about the Japanese culture or language, but I do know that there is nothing more entertaining than Japanese people arguing. It’s like the language is made for yelling. The dialogue starts out slow and measured but, as the argument progresses, the words become faster and louder, resulting in a final line where the person yells something super fast and his voice either raises or lowers in pitch, depending on the quality of the character. SinceHanzo is the samurai Jack Bauer, and, therefore, a badass , his voice lowers as he finishes yelling. It’s no coincidence that the Japanese style of arguing bears such a striking similarity to theKiefer Sutherland school of acting. Kiefer obviously watched many a samurai movie before perfecting his trademark acting technique of whispering a few lines and then screaming, “Drop your weapon!” at the top of his lungs.

Another similarity between Hanzo and Jack Bauer is the way in which they sacrifice their bodies for their work. Jack developed a heroin addiction, shaved off abitchin’ Grizzly Adams beard, and was more than willing to give up his own life for the good of his country. Hanzo also subjects his body to extreme torture for his work, but it’s a different kind of torture. Basically, Hanzo has a constantly erect wang that is, even by Japanese standards, quite massive. Hanzo’s dong is his most imporant tool in the fight against crime, so he trains it as he would any other part of his body. Well, maybe not exactly like every other part of his body. Basically, he sets his schlong on a stool with a cock-shaped groove, then beats it with a stick. Then he humps a sack of rice, an act which, oddly enough, is shot from the dong’s point of view. Really, this movie should be called Hanzo the Cudgel: Penis of Impartiality.

So Hanzo and his battered wang head out to help round up some ruffians, when he finds out that an exiled murderer has apparently returned to Edo. Knowing this seems a bit fishy, Hanzo investigates. He finds the killer’s average-looking mistress and interrogates her. Like Jack Bauer, Hanzo uses controversial and extreme interrogation techniques. But while Jack uses electrocution, gun shot wounds to the leg and threats to kill a suspect’s family, Hanzo uses his wang. He ties the girl up, bends her over, and sexes her up good, eventually leaving her begging for more and willing to answer any question. This rape/interrogation scene is one of the strangest I have ever seen. DirectorKenji Misumi frames the scene like an elementary school photos, where the ugly little kid is standing in front of autumn backdrop and up in the corner there’s another picture in semi-profile. Misumi superimposes that image over an abstract representation of extreme gynecological penetration. And everything is set to a romatic smooth jazz score.

Through his interrogation, Hanzo learns that this mystery is more complex than he could ever imagine. It goes all the way up to the royal palace, which means Hanzo has to interrogate a decent-looking friend of the royal family. This time he uses a slightly more elaborate interrogation technique: he puts the chick in a net and has his servants raise and lower her onto his erectschlong. Once again, the lady can’t get enough of the samurai wang and gives Hanzo all the information he needs.

Oh shit! I can’t believe I forgot about the part where the servant crouches in an outhouse to watch a chick pee. You might think that sounds exploitative and frivolous, but I assure you, it was completely essential to the plot. The servant needed to find out if the chick had a hairless crotch. How else would he be able to find out something like that?

Getting back to the main plot, once Hanzo finds out how keep the killer-freeing conspiracy really is, a bunch of people dressed a fireman try to kill him. Although, I have to admit I didn’t really know that they were dressed as firemen until the subtitles pointed it out for me. Feudal Japanese firemen dress a lot like assassins. Since I don’t want to give everything away, I won’t reveal the result of the final, Shakespearean in magnitude showdown. I will, however, reveal thatHanzo will be back in Hanzo the Razor: The Snare, which I will awesomely review once I get it in the mail.

It should be no surprise to any of you idiots that I absolutely loved Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice. Like 24 it has everything one could possibly ask for: a violent protagonist, ridiculouslyunbelievable (yet awesome) plot twists, and some occasionally preachy dialogue to make it seem like all the shamelessly violent action is actual part of some metaphysical musing upon the essential nature of justice and law. Plus it has a pudgy Japanese dude smacking hiswang with a stick. How often are you going to see that? On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Hanzo the Razor: Sword of Justice five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein.

Now, some of you might be saying, “But Shawn, what narrative element could possibly necessitate the repeated and graphic unveiling of Andy Lau’s latex man ass?” A valid query. In Running on Karma, Andy Lau plays a monk who, after accidentally killing an innocent sparrow, develops the ability to see karma. He can see into past lives and even catch glimpses of how karma will end the life of a living individual. Because of the intense emotional burden placed on him by such vision, Andy Lau forsakes his role as a monk, casts aside his monk robes (unveiling the latex man ass), and become a stripper. It is as a stripper that we first see Big and that we first see the latex man ass, both in a thong and without a thong.

When we first see Big, he is stripping, shaking his latex man ass for the enjoyment of many a sexy lady. Unfortunately for Big, one of the sexy ladies is a cop. Turns out Big is not only an ex-monk turned stripper gifted with the power of karmic vision, he’s also an illegal migrant ex-monk turned stripper gifted with the power of karmic vision. The cops raid the strip club and Big flees the scene, giving us our first glimpse of the latex man ass moving at high speeds.

While speeding naked through the streets, Big and the sexy cop lady chasing him run into (literally) another group of cops chasing an Indian contortionist murderer. (I should point out that this Indian is not a murderer of contortionists, but rather a murder who is also a contortionist himself.) During this collision, Big sees a vision of marauding Japanese soldiers, which he believes means that someone involved in the Indian contortionist murderer investigation is fated to die. It is this vision that starts Big on a journey toward self-discovery and high-flying ass-kicking.

When Big sees the vision of the Japanese soldiers, he is faced with a choice: to accept the karma or to do something about it. As an ex-monk, Big knows that karma is karma and it’s karma for a damn good reason. But at the same time, he doesn’t want the sexy cop lady to die because of the actions of murderous Japanese soldiers. Big decides to return to Hong Kong and help catch the Indian contortionist murders, as he feels this might save the life of the sexy cop lady. This plot line occupies roughly the first third of Running on Karma, when the movie is pretty much a straightforward Hong Kong action movie. Lots of martial arts actions, wire stunts and the like. However, this is just the first third of the movie, the other two thirds take entirely different approaches within entirely different genres.

When Big catches the Indian contortionist murderer, it does nothing to help the karma of the sexy cop lady. He decides that if he can protect the sexy cop lady from death, it would give her enough time to right her karmic wrongs. This is the second third of the movie, and it’s more like a romance than an action movie. And it’s a kinda messed up romance at that. This part of the movie is filled with rigged boxing matches, body building competitions, kosher monks and the sexy cop lady dressed as the Hong Kong interpretation of a punk rock raver. Oh, and there’s also a Hong Kong spiderman type dude. It’s an odd portion of the movie. But eventually the sexy cop lady decides that, if it is her fate to die, she wants to do it helping catch evildoers, so she goes into the mountains to catch a killer. Thus begins the third and penultimate act of Running on Karma, the revenge tragedy.

Naturally, the sexy cop lady doesn’t catch the killer. In fact, in a deliciously ironic twist, the killer catches her, bops her on the head with a bigass rock and then beheads her, also with a rock. This Shakespearean in magnitude turn of events does not please Big, who goes into the mountains to seek revenge. While in the mountains, Big rediscovers his inner karma, in the guise of a stick-fighting transient. Thanks to the teachings of the stick-fighting transient, Big learns to accept karma, sheds his stripper clothes (more latex man ass) and dons the robes of a monk. He also stays in the mountains for five years and loses a whole bunch of weight, thus making the final scene of Running on Karma thankfully free of latex man ass.

I feel that this Awesome Movie Review might not do Running on Karma justice. Yes, there is a lot of unrealistic latex man ass. Or at least I assume the latex man ass is unrealistic. I don’t claim to be an expert in man ass. But my gut feeling tells me that the latex man ass is not nearly as believable as it could be. And the plot jumps around a good deal. First Big is in Hong Kong, then he’s in China. One moment Big is nice to the sexy cop lady, then he’s ignoring her or telling her that she’s destined to die for sins she didn’t commit. Despite those flaws, Running on Karma is still a most excellent movie. Some might say the action sequences are a little phony, but I didn’t have a problem with them. I mean, how realistic can a man in a latex man ass suit wrapping up a Hong Kong spiderman inside a satellite dish possibly be? The action sequences might be over the top, but they’re still quite enjoyable. On my scale of one to five tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein, I give Running on Karma four tiny heads of Sergei Eisenstein. And if it hadn’t been for all that latex man ass, it probably would have got five.