Movie of the Year | Transformers: Rise of the Fallon

It wouldn't be summer without an action-packed crapfest stinking up theaters and last summer brought us one of the very best. Transformers: Rise of the Fallon was far and away the best of any god-awful movie all year.

We learn that thousands of years ago an evil Audibot wanted to steal our sun by building a massive sun stealing machine. Some Primes (but not Optimal, he wasn't born yet) sacrificed themselves and hid somesuch so it didn't happen. This made the evil one, dubbed The Fallon, want to seek revenge, but not until he's had thousands of years to stew in his angry juices and spawn a few new Deceptibots. Then, early in the movie, there's a confusing and visually assaulting scene that induces migraines in the weak. This scene introduces us to the first ever gay robots Skidmark and Mudflaps. These two are the racially insensitive comic relief who fight and bicker like brothers throughout the movie. The Audibots and US Army successfully destroy Shanghai then high-five each other while drinking beer.

She's No Dummy!

It seems I can no longer rent terrible movies. I mean, I thought that out of the hundreds I watch each and every month that at least one would be a bad movie. Not so. Case in point: Mannequin, starring the ravishing Kim Cattrall and the far-from-idiotic Andrew McCarthy, is one of the best movies I've seen in quite some time.

The story goes like this: In ancient Egypt, a wild, reckless, blonde American-Egyptian named Emmy pleaded with God to let her live forever--or at least until she can experience life and find true love. God, being the magician he is, decides to grant her the wish--but with one caveat: she must live with a curse her entire life. Evidently the curse is being a mannequin throughout history. In a cute, expertly animated intro we learn that Emmy has been a part of almost every milestone in human history. Da Vinci's muse? Check. Christopher Columbus new world expedition? Check. First woman to wear a sanitary napkin? Check. In short, she's been around.

A Horror-Musical with Heart

If you're anything like me then your love of pirates goes beyond simply wearing an eye patch and yelling "AAARGH Matey!" to passersby. You probably dress like a pirate every day. Recently I enjoyed the horror-musical spectacular with the ingenious and cleverly thought-out name The Pirate Movie. This film is filled with scary pirates, young lovers, ineffectual policmen, rich daddies and wonderful songs. Based on the Gilbert & Sullivan musical, The Pirates of Penzance, but without all those messy plot details.

Our tale begins in the present day when a hot pirate named Fred, played by the mulit-talented Christopher Atkins, is putting on a sword fight show for his beautiful young admirers. This scene gives you the first scream-out-loud moment when ugly-duckling Kristi McNichol lumbers into the frame, face all twisted up into a hungry grimace, sniffing out her next meal. Somehow Fred falls for the brainless zombie and invites her and her hot under-age friends to his private island, where he's hoping to put his pocket sword to good use. They leave without her, because she's an ugly zombie, but proving she's more than just a brain eater, she rents her own sailboat to chase after them. On the way she encounters some choppy seas, is knocked out of the boat, unconcious. Moments later she wakes washed ashore on a lonely strip of beach. She's gloriously transformed into a beautiful island princess, complete with headband. She decides to stroll the beach and sing a song about love.

Meanwhile, a plucky young Fred is aboard the Good Ship Lollipop. He's tired of the rape and pillage lifestyle and needs a change. You see, he's been a pirate since birth and all he wants is to find love. He sings a song of hope and yearning. Luckily the rest of the pirates make him walk the plank. Just when you thought he was gone for good, he pops back into the frame. Unfortunately, this becomes a recurring theme throughout the picture.

In a nutshell, the pirates need to get laid, so they head towards Hot Kristi and her 50 sisters who are dancing and singing in skimpy beachwear. The details are a little fuzzy, but basically the pirates want sex, Head Pirate wants the loot from the girls Rich Daddy, Fred wants Hot Kristi, and Hot Kristi wants to be a man. Fred decides to help Rich Daddy fight the pirates so he can marry Hot Kristi. Head Pirate wants Fred back because he now realizes he's without a cabin boy. This puts Fred into a tough spot: marry Hot Kristi, or contiune being Head Pirates butt boy? He is understandably torn between the two. At this point he decides a poorly written song is in order.

Will the young lovers get together? Will Head Pirate rape and pillage Rich Daddy? Will the pirates reveal their true nature in the full moon? Will Zombie Kristy finally find a worthy brain to feast on? With sword fights filled with homo-erotic imagery, Hot Kristi parading around in next to nothing, wussy-boy policemen, kick ass pirates, intense action sequences sandwiched between mind-numbing expository scenes, and songs that make you want to tear your ears off, this movie will answer all your questions and leave you hungering for more. Sharp song-writing, stellar vocals, inventive casting, clever dialogue, more screams per minute than Scream, and an over-abundance of the soft focus complete this timeless masterpiece. I give this movie a solid B-.

The Hills are Alive with the Sound of Laughter

I recently watched one of the funniest comedies I have ever seen. It's called Silent Hill. Full of slapstick, witty banter, and funny monsters, this movie will engage, enlighten, and entertain even the most stoic of persons.

Rose Saliva has a problem. Her daughter, Sharon has taken to sleepwalking to a cliff every night. Instead of simply locking her doors, or setting up some kind of alarm system, she decides the best course of action would be to take Share to the sleepy little town that's been giving her nightmares: Silent Hill. Just before the turn off for Silent Hill, Rose decides to stop off at a dank Rest Station to ask for directions. A hot lesbian cop tries hitting on Rose and although you can see her momentarily mull the offer, she decides to head for Silent Hill at a break neck speed, with Copper hot on her tail. This becomes a theme throughout the picture.

Before arriving in town, Rose sees a ghostly figure in the road way. Since she's going nearly 90 MPH, she decides to slam on the brakes and jerk the steering wheel causing the Jeep to skid out of control and into a barrier, knocking herself unconsciouss. She wakes to a beautiful ashy, smokey morning and finds Share is missing. She wanders into town pushing old bag ladies around in search of her daughter.

Rose slowly learns that Silent Hill is not a normal town. Something she apparently already learned as she surfed the net before she left, but somehow forgot in transit. The town alternates between daylight and darkness, the darkness brought on by wailing air raid sirens and strange, lonely creatures looking for love in all the wrong places. Rose is so closed minded she screams in the poor creatures faces and runs away. She encounters small babies that she kicks away, a janitor with broken legs tied up to his head, a man with a pyramid for a head that's looking to take a wife, and so on.

With Copper's help they track Share to an old church where they meet the nice lady dictator who enjoys burning people alive. This is because her minions so enjoy it. When the people demand it, you must deliver. That's what I always say. Anyway, as Rose goes to meet a tiny demon in hopes of exchanging her soul for her daughter, Dictator decides Copper would make a nice lunch and burns her at the stake. This makes the dirty townspeople whoop it up. It's been such a long time since they had a little roast pig.

Oh yeah, in a subplot that is highly memorable, Rose's husband, Mr. Rose, is searching for his wife--never mind his daughter--in Silent Hill. Only, this Silent Hill is very different: no smokey, ashy air, no dirty townspeople. Just Rose's Jeep and a shady cop who knows more than he's willing to share. Probably because he doesn't really know, he just thinks he does.

Anyway, Rose encounters some Nurses who want to cut her then suture her up again and a tiny, childish demon who wants the Dictator to be her mother. I won't spoil the ending, but sufficed to say mother is reunited with daughter and demon is reunited with Dictator all in the name of gore and violence.

I give this movie a B+ for hilarious banter between Rose and various characters (particularly a scene involving Rose, Copper, Ron Howard's Daughter and a randomly placed swinging vine), great special effects (you mean, the old bag lady is really beautiful Deborah Kara Unger?? No way!), and a demon who looks like a child (and acts like it too, the spoiled brat!).

A Ground-Shaking Good Time

This weekend I watched the most delightful movie about ravenous earth monsters with a blood lust for humans that I've ever seen. It's called Tremors. The story goes like this: in a desolate Nevada town named Perfection, probably since it's nestled in a water-starved valley between mountains and a cliff, the local residents start dying one by one. Considering the entire population is around 10 people, this becomes quite alarming. Now, you'd think that perhaps the local bigot finally blew his lid due to the extreme isolation, but no. Actually the increasingly violent and gruesome deaths are caused by huge, blind, stinky worms that live underground. They can sense vibrations as the towns people run about to and fro. They also have cognitive learning abilities, something the regular towns people seem to have been born without. So as the towns people learn they must get off the ground, the earth monsters (or Graboids, as they are lovingly called) learn how to destroy whatever it is the delicious humans have climbed upon, thus securing one more meal in their quest for constant food. They also have multiple tentacles with grabby mouths that snake out of the gapping hole in their heads.

Luckily, the towns people have Valentine and Earl (Kevin Bacon and Fred Ward), the local gay handymen who live, work and travel together to help solve the Mystery of the Graboid. Luckily for them, they stumble upon a plucky 45 year old geology student, Rhonda, spending her days and nights researching and analyzing the perplexing Mystery of the Seismograph. Then there's Burt and Heather, the local gun enthusiasts, who have a difficult time listening, but can wield a gun like no other. The rest of the cast who isn't dead early on includes Walter, the Chinese shop owner (and only businessowner in town, I'm guessing), Melvin, the local teen bully who has neither parents nor peers to bully, Nancy, the mother of pogo-sticking Mindy, Miguel, the token Hispanic dude, and Nestor, the town dumb ass.

Besides roll-in-the-aisles-with-laughter banter between the stressed-out towns people, the movie is loaded with intense action sequences featuring some of the finest puppetry and animatronic effects ever captured on film, balanced by sweet and tender love scenes featuring one hot threesome between Val, Earl and Rhonda as they're stranded on a rock outcrop over night. Luckily Rhonda finds some poles nearby and they vault their way to freedom (much to the delight of Val and Earl). In another scene after a Graboid makes for a game of Grabass with Rhonda, but grabs only her pleated pants, Val stares lovingly at her panties while sloppily applying gore makeup to her legs. These scenes show that even in a time of crisis, fun can be had at the expense of all.

I won't give away the farm (they all live, except poor, poor Walter) and spoil the fun for you (they kill the last of 4 by running it off a cliff), but I highly recommend investing 96 minutes of your time into a family friendly tale about love, loss, diversity, tolerance and humongous earth worms. A-