VH Corner

I forgot to post songs last Wednesday and Saturday. I had three songs left for February, so you get them all today.

 

Artist: Louis XIV
Song: Finding Out True Love Is Blind
Album: Best Little Secrets Are Kept

More sexy, lusty love songs! I love the parts the woman sings best.

Finding Out True Love Is Blind

Ah chocolate girl, you're looking like something I want
(finding out true love is blind)
Ah and your little Asian friend she can come if she wants
(finding out true love is blind)
I want all the self conscious girls who try to hide who they are with makeup
(finding out true love is blind)
You know it's the girl with a frown with the tight pants I really want to shake up
(finding out true love is blind)

Hey, carrot juice, I wanna squeeze you away until you bleed
(finding out true love is blind)
And your vanilla friend, well she looks like something I need
(finding out true love is blind)
I want miss little smart girl with your glasses and all your books
(finding out true love is blind)
And I want the stupid girl who gives me all those dirty looks
(finding out true love is blind)

Wind you up and make you crawl to me
Tie you up until you call to me
[x2]

Ah brown girl with those with the hot pants shaking that thing on the street
(finding out true love is blind)
Yeah and the short girls with the way they crawl knocks me off my feet
(finding out true love is blind)
And all the tough girls who never want me to see them cry
(finding out true love is blind)
And the girls who say treat me like a dog until the day I die
(finding out true love is blind)

Ah chocolate girl, you're looking like something I want
Ah and your little Asian friend well she can come if she wants
I want all the self conscious girls who try to hide who they are with makeup
You know it's the girl with a frown with the tight pants I really want to shake up

Hey, carrot juice, I wanna squeeze you away until you bleed
(finding out true love is blind)
And your vanilla friend, well she looks like something I need
(finding out true love is blind)
I want miss little smart girl with your glasses and all your books
(finding out true love is blind)
And I want the stupid girl who gives me all those dirty looks
(finding out true love is blind)

Wind me up and make me crawl to you
Tie me up and make me call to you

Wind you up and make you crawl to me
Tie you up until you call to me

I forgot to post songs last Wednesday and Saturday. I had three songs left for February, so you get them all today.

 

Artist: Bad Manners
Song: Skinhead Love Affair
Album: Fat Sound

Bad Manners are an 80s ska band that died out in the 90s. I think they are still around, but it isn't clear if they are actually making new music. I found them when I was in my ska phase in the mid 90s. I loved everything ska then. Back in the 70s and 80s, ska music was sometimes referred to as 2-Tone music since it was black and white kids making it together. Also because they usually wore black and white suits. The British refer to skinheads more as the shaved head kids that listened to ska music in the 70s and 80s, and not to neo Nazi freaks. Even skinheads need love.

Skinhead Love Affair

I met her at a ballroom gig
She said my braces were too big
I said, "I like your 2-Tone clothes"
She said, "I like your broken nose"

I bought her lots of drinks that night
She bought me nothing but a fight
She said I wasn't Mr. Right
It's over, it's over, it's over

It was a skinhead love affair
You know, a skinhead love affair

I took her down to Last Resort
She stole a shirt, I went to court
She said she'd always stand by me
Even when I did DC
I thought about her everyday
Like lovers do when they're away
She never came to visit me
It's over, it's over, it's over

It was a skinhead love affair
You know, a skinhead love affair

On the day that I got out
My skinhead girl she weren't about
She got herself a sour girl perm
Joined the Candy Oil Infirm
I got down on bended knee
And asked her if she'd marry me
She said, "Skinhead, can't you see?
It's over, it's over, it's over"

It was a skinhead love affair
You know, a skinhead love affair

I'm just a skinhead in love
Just a skinhead in love
Just a skinhead, a skinhead, a skinhead in love
I'm just a skinhead in love

I forgot to post songs last Wednesday and Saturday. I had three songs left for February, so you get them all today.

 

Artist: Lick the Tins
Song: Can't Help Falling In Love
Album: Blind Man On a Flying Horse

I fell in love with this song when I watched Some Kind of Wonderful for the first time. It appears at the end of the movie after Eric Stoltz and Mary Stuart Masterson kiss. I don't like Elvis, so I don't like the original. I do love this version though.

Can't Help Falling In Love

Wise men say only fools rush in
But I cant help falling in love with you
Shall I stay
Would it be a sin
If I cant help falling in love with you

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand, take my whole life too
For I cant help falling in love with you

Like a river flows surely to the sea
Darling so it goes
Some things are meant to be
Take my hand, take my whole life too
For I cant help falling in love with you
For I cant help falling in love with you

New Shows

Black Donnellys
Channel: NBC
Time: 10 ET/PT
Premieres: Monday, February 25

Four Irish brothers put their family first while dealing with organized crime in New York City.

 

Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader?
Channel: FOX
Time: 9:30 ET/PT
Premieres: Tuesday, Feb 26

Jeff Foxworthy hosts a game show where all questions come from fifth grade textbooks.

 

Sources: TV Guide

Nationwide Releases

Reno 911!: Miami
Directed: Robert Ben Garant
Starring: Thomas Lennon, Robert Ben Garant

The Reno cops head to Miami for a police convention.

RT Score: 37%
RT Consensus: Reno 911!'s anarchic brand of comedy loses much in translation to the big screen where it feels slapdash and shallow.

The humor is arresting, and boredom is thrown into lockdown.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

Instead of creating a movie, the Reno 911 gang has made a dumber version of their TV show, while adding curse words and nudity, which is what I would expect from 10-year olds.
- Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com

It's a lot easier to pack laughs into a half-hour television show than a full-length.
- Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News

While you may laugh here and there, if you wait for the DVD you can skip the slow sections for the high points.
- Gene Seymour
Newsday

Joyfully ridiculous…proudly puerile… revels in obscenity… immature violence…
- Fred Topel
Can Magazine

For funny, it’s not even on the same map of the former Soviet Union as, say, Borat. But the straight-outta-cable Reno 911: Miami is funnier than Super Troopers and at least four of six Police Academys.
- Jim Slotek
Jam! Movies

The Number 23
Directed: Joel Schumacher
Starring: Jim Carrey, Virginia Madsen

Jim Carrey reads a book about paranoia and the number 23 while becoming paranoid about the number 23.

RT Score: 8%
RT Consensus: Clumsy, unengaging, and mostly confusing, The Number 23 fails as both a psychological thriller and a Jim Carrey career move.

Twenty-three reasons to avoid wasting your time with "The Number 23."
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

There's a mess of things wrong with this suspense thriller. Start with the fact that it's neither suspenseful nor thrilling.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

23=0
- Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)

By the end, you'll want to stick around, if only to crack the Jim Carrey code: Is he a real actor after all, or is the rabid urgency with which he keeps trying to be the most real thing about him?
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

Gimmicky numerology plus Jim Carrey minus narrative coherence equals The Number 23.
- Justin Chang
Variety

The Astronaut Farmer
Directed: Michael Polish
Starring: Billy Bob Thornton, Virginia Madsen

Billy Bob had to drop out of NASA due to a family situation, but still wants to be an astronaut. He decides to build a rocket on his farm so he can launch himself into space.

RT Score: 59%
RT Consensus: The Astronaut Farmer is a charming, inspirational drama that successfully avoids modern cinematic cliches while appealing to the optimistic dreamer in all of us.

The Astronaut Farmer may not be fresh or unpredictable, but it has no problem lifting off. It's nice to believe we live in a world in which Charles can launch into the heavens.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

The movie is so serenely in orbit that there's nothing to do but float along and enjoy the strange, sweet ride.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

Quirky for quirky's sake, making it absurd and insulting.
- Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)

"Even for those who don't wholly buy into the film's 'if we don't have our dreams, we have nothing' ethos, there are many small pleasures to savor."
- Sura Wood
Hollywood Reporter

The closer the character gets to actually firing up his rocket, the less fun the film becomes. The Polish brothers lose their goofy sense of humor, and The Astronaut Farmer turns serious and, heaven help us, inspiring.
- Robert W. Butler
Kansas City Star

Limited Releases

Starter For 10
Directed: Tom Vaughan
Starring: James Corden, James McAvoy

Set in mid-80s Britain, a working-class boy wants to woo a teammate for a quiz show, while another girl might have more in common with him.

RT Score: 88%
RT Consensus: A spirited coming-of-age tale that remains charming and witty even as it veers into darker subjects.

Don't mind the featherweight plot. A cheeky comedy with sex and smarts earns a passing grade.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

There's a tidiness and affection to this British homage to John Hughes movies and the youthful error of first going for the wrong, hurtful girl instead of the right, patient one.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

The bland but likable enough coming-of-age trifle Starter for 10 comes made by and for people whose feet tap involuntarily the second they hear the big beat of the Psychedelic Furs' 'Love My Way.'
- Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News

If you grew up in the British Isles at that time, you'll totally get it. But even if you didn't, it'll probably ring truer than the comic college hijinks you're used to seeing on the screen.
- Luke Y. Thompson
E! Online

[McAvoy] carries lightly what could have been a cliché-ridden clunker and helps create an utterly winning romantic comedy.
- Katey Rich
Film Journal International

Glastonbury
Directed: Julien Temple

A couple is dealing with their own problems in Mali while a big trial is happening next to their house.

RT Score: 79%

Super-scintillating. We're fortunate to have a bright, bold documentary like Glastonbury to remind us how fun, weird and wonderful life can be.
- Gregory Weinkauf
ÜberCiné

Julien Temple's formless documentary Glastonbury aims to capture the festival's chaos and free-wheeling freakiness and accomplishes this goal.
- Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News

A long, structureless muddle that does justice to neither the stellar acts nor changing countercultural times event has encompassed.
- Dennis Harvey
Variety

Features some beautiful and epic performances that are enough, on their own, to entertain.
- Joe Utichi
FilmFocus

Temple is able to convey a perceptive and substantive mood pertaining to the staying power of this weirdly nuanced outdoor finger-snapping function.
- Frank Ochieng
TheWorldJournal.com

The overall soundtrack seamlessly patches together a sonic quilt of eclectic music that evokes a kind of timeless flow. It's not a Glastonbury of any particular vintage, but rather a continuum of experiences that have occurred on this sacred ground.
- Kevin Crust
Los Angeles Times

Amazing Grace
Directed: Michael Apted
Starring: Ioan Gruffudd, Albert Finney

During the time when the British Empire was the most powerful in the world, one man worked to get the slave trade abolished.

RT Score: 69%
RT Consensus: Amazing Grace is your quintessential historical biopic: stately, noble, and with plenty of electrifying performances.

Coming soon to a social studies class near you.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

Handsome bio-pic wavers between a surplus of piety and a well done history lesson.
- Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)

It leaves the blood unstirred.
- Gregory Kirschling
Entertainment Weekly

This compelling bio-pic is an overdue tribute to William Wilberforce (1759-1833), the British abolitionist who, for 20 years, tirelessly lobbied Parliament to end England's participation in the slave trade.
- Kam Williams
NewsBlaze

It's clear that the filmmakers believe a movie about political debate has to have a lot of speechifying. Consequently, it's so talky that it gradually loses our interest, which is a real shame.
- Jeff Vice
Deseret News, Salt Lake City

Gray Matters
Directed: Sue Kramer
Starring: Heather Graham, Tom Cavanagh

Heather Graham and Tom Cavanagh are brother and sisters, but are so compatible that people think they are dating. They decided they really need to find their own love lives.

RT Score: 10%

If Heather Graham is on the way to becoming the next Goldie Hawn she has a ways yet to go in this soft-core coming out flick by Sue Kramer.
- Ron Wilkinson
Monsters and Critics

Never have I ever wanted to climb into the screen and kill every single character as much as I did with this movie.
- Edward Douglas
ComingSoon.net

The movie really depends on Heather Graham, and she just doesn't deliver. There's always been a sort of mannequin quality to her performances, as if she had been posed just seconds before the cameras rolled.
- Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger

Sue Kramer is clearly out to shake up the boring old boy-meets-girl formula, but her movie is so filled with preposterous coincidence and ridiculous clunky plot machinations that it's impossible to ignore them and focus on the equally contrived story.
- Angel Cohn
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Heather Graham seems resigned to mugging and shrugging out the remainder of her thirties through a series of undercooked romantic comedies.
- Michelle Orange
Village Voice

Cocaine Angel
Directed: Michael Tully
Starring: Brenda Benfield, Damian Lahey

A guy struggles with cocaine addiction.

RT Score: 60%

If this film was intended as a joke, consider me fooled.
- Ed Gonzalez
Slant Magazine

Scrappy and defiantly deglamorized, this chronicle of a couple of long, useless days in the life of a down-and-out coke addict oozes miserable authenticity without giving you a reason to care.
- Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide's Movie Guide

Movies about addicts are a dime a dozen, but Cocaine Angel does its own thing, mixing humor with bleakness and resisting the too-common urge to romanticize addiction.
- V.A. Musetto
New York Post

Pitch-perfect central perf (by scribe and co-producer Damian Lahey), total lack of dramatic artifice and surreally situational humor make for a minor-key vignette of unmistakable, if unstable, authenticity.
- Robert Koehler
Variety

We may learn nothing new about the grasp of addiction, but the movie’s lean 75 minutes is at least a genuinely fast track to oblivion.
- Jeannette Catsoulis
New York Times

Nationwide Releases

Bridge to Terabithia
Directed: Gabor Csupo
Starring: Josh Hutcherson, AnnaSophia Robb

Based on the novel about two kids who find a magical kingdom and have adventures.

RT Score: 85%
RT Consensus: Bridge to Terabithia is a faithful adaptation of a beloved children's novel and a powerful portrayal of love, loss, and imagination through children's eyes.

In Bridge to Terabithia, the two middle schoolers who stumble onto a whole new world don't seem all that wowed. And the movie … never decides if it's a fantasy or coming-of-age story.
- Gregory Kirschling
Entertainment Weekly

Extraordinarily close to the book by Katherine Paterson in many ways, the film may even surpass it by showing how a shocking instance of grief can draw a family together.
- M. K. Terrell
Christian Science Monitor

sometimes feels like a rudderless movie meandering along without a plot, but you can enjoy the ride, and feel the emotional wallop waiting for you at the end.
- Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com

Everyone involved genuinely seems to believe in the power of imagination to enliven — and enlighten — the darkest realities, and that's a magic this film captures beautifully.
- Elizabeth Weitzman
New York Daily News

Pan's Labyrinth for kids… such a story can be just as powerful without the gore and war.
- Fred Topel
Can Magazine

It pulls no punches from the harder aspects of the book, particularly the central tragedy that makes Bridge to Terabithia the tremendously sad, albeit redeeming, movie it is.
- Jim Slotek
Jam! Movies

Breach
Directed: Billy Ray
Starring: Chris Cooper, Ryan Phillippe, Laura Linney

Ryan Phillippe is a new FBI agent assigned to get to know Chris Cooper, who is a traitor selling secrets to Russia since 1985, but there is no proof.

RT Score: 79%
RT Consensus: Powered by Chris Cooper's masterful performance, Breach is a tense and engaging portrayal of the FBI's infamous turncoat.

Just when you're thinking every new American film belongs in the Bomb Squad, along comes Breach to win one for our side.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

In truth, the movie leaves us scratching our heads. And yet, for most of it, I was held — by Chris Cooper's dour portrayal of walled-off demons, by the director's fascination with a deception that, on the surface of it, doesn't add up.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

Tense, well executed psyhcological thriller.
- Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)

Expertly crafted, if slightly pedestrian, docudrama, more quietly intriguing than compellingly dramatic [but] sparked by Cooper's bravura turn.
- Frank Swietek
One Guy's Opinion

This unconventional thriller tells us up front who the bad guy is and what happened to him in 2001. Then we puzzle out bits of his personality while watching Eric O'Neill, the agent assigned to catch him, go through a crisis of conscience.
- Lawrence Toppman
Charlotte Observer

Music and Lyrics
Directed: Marc Lawrence
Starring: Drew Barrymore, Hugh Grant

Hugh Grant used to be an 80's pop star that is getting another shot at fame, but is having problems with the lyrics. That's where Drew Barrymore comes in.

RT Score: 65%
RT Consensus: This earnest Christian parable is undone by its pompous dialogue and cheap FX.

Somewhere in the middle of "Music and Lyrics" it hit me: Hugh Grant has the exact persona of C-3PO.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

As Hugh Grant ages, something is becoming clear: The actor's most compelling attribute is not his floppy forelock but the vein of charming self-loathing that has always been pulsing under his masterfully mussed-up hair.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

Harmless, innocuous froth which could have been worse.
- Boo Allen
Denton Record Chronicle (TX)

If Music and Lyrics were a song, you'd have to say it doesn't have a good beat, though it is easy to dance to.
- Roger Moore
Orlando Sentinel

Written using Final Draft with an Adam Sandler declaration-of-love-in-a-stadium ending.
- Victoria Alexander
FilmsInReview.com

Ghost Rider
Directed: Mark Steven Johnson
Starring: Nicolas Cage, Wes Bentley

Comic book adaptation where Johnny Blaze makes a deal with the devil.

RT Score: 24%
RT Consensus: Ghost Rider is a sour mix of morose, glum histrionics amidst jokey puns and hammy dialogue.

For years scientists have theorized that one day Nicolas Cage would overact so badly that his head would burst into flames. Now, with Ghost Rider, the phenomenon has finally come to pass.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

If you loved Daredevil and I dare you to say you did, you'll marvel that director Mark Steven Johnson has done it again: taken a dark, twisted hero from the Marvel Comics playbook and homogenized him into a toy boy suitable for mass consumption.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

I kept hoping the Scooby Doo gang would come out, rip the mask off of Cage and reveal Ghost Rider really is crazy old man Ben Affleck! That would explain so much.
- Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com

What begins as a standard-yet-watchable superhero adventure slowly congeals into something approaching the caliber of Catwoman. Not as bad, but kinda knocking on the doorstep.
- Scott Weinberg
Cinematical

The movie could have been saved, though, if it had cut the puns of the kind that made us all flee Batman and Robin.
- Kyle Smith
New York Post

Daddy's Little Girls
Directed: Tyler Perry
Starring: Gabrielle Union, Idris Elba

A single dad loses custody of his three little girls in a divorce. He hires Gabrielle Union as his lawyer to try to win them back, while he and her hit it off.

RT Score: 26%
RT Consensus: Daddy's Little Girls boasts fine performances and a poignant message, but is ultimately let down by amateurish filmmaking.

Daddy's Little Girls is a frightening step backwards for the Perry empire, revealing a filmmaker who I once thought was just kidding around, but now it turns out he's legitimately incompetent and irresponsible.
- Brian Orndorf
OhmyNews.com

There'll always be a place for Perry in a world where there are moviegoers who find Spike Lee's films too challenging.
- Edward Douglas
ComingSoon.net

The lead actors make Perry's didacticism easier to take.
- Jason Anderson
Globe and Mail

It’s melodrama at the Lifetime-movie level, but even that is a step up. Perry will never be a great filmmaker, or probably even a good one, but he's moved into the ranks of the mediocre.
- Jeremy C. Fox
Pajiba

The script isn't much better than Perry's Madea's Family Reunion… but it helps that Perry doesn't show up in the crass, cross-dressing role of Madea and that he has hired some excellent actors.
- Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
St. Paul Pioneer Press

 

Limited Releases

Avenue Montaigne
Directed: Daniele Thompson
Starring: Cecile de France, Claude Brasseur

A young woman moves from the countryside in France to Paris to work on the famous Avenue Montaigne and interact with the famous and talented folks that visit her shop.

RT Score: 79%
RT Consensus: This earnest Christian parable is undone by its pompous dialogue and cheap FX.

Who can turn le monde on with her smile? Why, it's Jessica (Cécile De France), a small-town gamine with spunk to spare in Avenue Montaigne.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

An absolute must for Francophiles and a great choice for anyone who loves a vibrant ensemble dramedy, Avenue Montaigne is a bustling delight, a slice of Parisian artistic life that will have you dialing Air France the morning after you see it.
- Don Willmott
filmcritic.com

Visually sumptuous but flat of plot, eccentric characters can't redeem this mildly funny romantic comedy from the hum-drum.
- Ron Wilkinson
Monsters and Critics

Director Danièle Thompson piles on enough pop culture references to please any Francophile in this love letter to Paris, so it wouldn't hurt to know Charles Aznavour from Gilbert Bécaud.
- Kent Turner
Film-Forward.com

[The director] admirably juggles the different narratives and knows how to imbue her stock characters and situations with life through a savvy direction of her actors.
- Boyd van Hoeij
europeanfilms.net

Bamako
Directed: Abderrahmnane Sissako
Starring: Aissa Maiga, Djeneba Kone

A couple is dealing with their own problems in Mali while a big trial is happening next to their house.

RT Score: 83%
RT Consensus: This earnest Christian parable is undone by its pompous dialogue and cheap FX.

A passionate, challenging drama from the fine Mauritian writer-director Abderrahmane Sissako.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

Rather than detract from the seriousness of the issues, Sissako’s light touch encourages a deeper level of engagement.
- Jason Anderson
eye WEEKLY

A gritty and gutsy examination of how African nations are suffering incredible hardships and poverty under the boots of Western globalization policies.
- Frederic and Mary Ann Brussat
Spirituality and Practice

While worthy, Bamako suffers somewhat fromits structure. Some of the testimony becomes so complicated that unless you are an expert or really truly versed on the subject, you just might tune out (as I found myself doing on occasion).
- Ted Murphy
Murphy's Movie Reviews

Much of the nearly two-hour film consists of impassioned but lengthy speeches about interest rates, deficits, poverty and corruption. This is no way to entertain an audience, so Sissako throws in a few hastily drawn characters and a threadbare plot.
- Rafer Guzman
Newsday

Close to Home
Directed: Vardit Bilu
Starring: Neama Shendar, Smadar Sayar

During compulsory military service in Israel, two women don't like each other at first but end up bonding over the experience.

RT Score: 64%

The interest in its character contrasts is somewhere below the level of gripping and a major failure is the outcome for the sake of an ambiguously happy ending.
- Jules Brenner
Cinema Signals

[Directors] Hager and Bilu's film is that increasingly rare thing: a coming-of-age tale centered on a female friendship that actually feels rooted in the real world. More importantly, it presents an image of today's Israeli army.
- Ken Fox
TV Guide's Movie Guide

If you've ever stifled a bubble of rage while going through airport security, you will recognize the tensions in Close to Home.
- Stephen Holden
New York Times

As a whole the film feels trite in the way it trivialises and sentimentalises what it is claiming to be an inherently flawed system.
- David Jenkins
Time Out

I won't argue for the cinematic virtues of this film; they don't exist. But as a pseudo-documentary portrait of real life behind the explosive headlines, it's absorbing.
- Andrew O'Hehir
Salon.com

If you are talking about love songs, you cannot forget the Dead Milkmen!

Artist: Dead Milkmen
Song: If You Love Somebody, Set Them on Fire
Album: Metaphysical Graffiti

The title really sums it up. I just had to pick this one for Valentine’s Day.

If You Love Somebody, Set Them on Fire

You know that it would be untrue
You know that I would be a liar
If I were to say to you
I didn’t set your house on fire
But it’s just the way I am
You’ll have to take it for a fact
Life can really burn you up
When you’re a pyromaniac

If you love somebody
Better set them on fire

I went to your house last night
Your dad called me the human torch
Got a little pissed at him
so I burned down your front porch
Now I feel a little bad
About pouring gas on your dad
But you know it’s hard to quit
And besides he started it

If you love somebody
Better set them on fire

I just bought a brand new lighter
And I cannot wait to use it
Oily rags are special things
You know to me they’re diamond rings
Maybe we can have some fun
Maybe we can burn someone

If you love somebody
Better set them on fire

Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man s Chest

Johnny Depp, Orlando Bloom and Keira Knightley are all back. Jack Sparrow owes a debt to Davy Jones, who happens to be dead, and now he wants his payment.

Even though the movie made millions and millions of dollars while breaking box office records, critics for the most part did not like the movie. What I read said it had no plot whatsoever. I could believe that since I still wasn’t really sure about the plot of the first one. I just had a fun time watching it.

I thought this one had more of a plot, so I’m not sure what the complaints about no plot were about. Davy Jones wanted Jack Sparrow to pay up his debts and a bunch of people were all going after Davy Jones’ heart so they could control him or free themselves/others from his debt.

The special effects were awesome on the movie. All of Davy Jones’ crew were creepy looking, but didn’t look completely fake. It wasn’t distracting like it could have been. Johnny Depp was awesome like he was in the last movie. I didn’t buy that there was any chemistry between him and Keira Knightley though. That could have been because his teeth were so scary that I couldn’t get past that. I seem to like Orlando Bloom only when he does movies from another time period. He just seems to fit in with them better than he does in present day movies, so I still liked him in this movie.

It was a fun movie and I really enjoyed it. It wasn’t ground breaking, and it was predictable, but I didn’t mind it. It was what a summer movie should be–tons of fluffy fun.

Grade: B+

The next love song is a super sad one.

Artist: Death Cab For Cutie
Song: I Will Follow You Into the Dark
Album: Plans

Not all love songs can be super happy ones, but can still be filled with devotion. This is one of them.

I Will Follow You Into the Dark

Love of mine some day you will die
But I’ll be close behind
I’ll follow you into the dark

No blinding light or tunnels to gates of white
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs

If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

In Catholic school as vicious as Roman rule
I got my knuckles bruised by a lady in black
And I held my tongue as she told me
“Son fear is the heart of love”
So I never went back

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs

If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

You and me have seen everything to see
From Bangkok to Calgary
And the soles of your shoes are all worn down
The time for sleep is now
it’s nothing to cry about
Cause wel’ll hold each other soon
The blackest of rooms

If Heaven and Hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Illuminate the NOs on their vacancy signs

If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks
Then I’ll follow you into the dark
Then I’ll follow you into the dark

Nationwide Releases

Hannibal Rising
Directed: Peter Webber
Starring: Gaspard Ulliel, Rhys Ifans

Follows how Hannibal Lector turns into a serial killer after growing up in a Soviet orphanage after his parents violently died.

RT Score: 17%
RT Consensus: Hannibal Rising reduces the horror icon to a collection of dime-store psychological traits.

While it’s fascinating to watch the killer evolve, the fact that he’s always onscreen detracts from his mystique. Hannibal derives much of his intrigue from his mystery.
- Phil Villarreal
Arizona Daily Star

The great thing about monsters is that they glide noiselessly from nightmare straight into myth, fully formed and eternally mysterious. To know what made them is to explain them. And once you explain anything, you begin to lose your fear of it.
- Stephen Whitty
Newark Star-Ledger

What this nasty, brutish movie left me feeling was ashamed to be American. First of all: As a folk archetype, a supervillain for our times, this is the best we can come up with? A vaguely Eurotrash schoolboy who eats people’s cheeks?
- Dana Stevens
Slate

what’s left is a plodding revenge story, memorable only for the way it strips the last vestiges of interest from what was once a fascinating character.
- Glenn Whipp
Los Angeles Daily News

The guy’s about as intimidating as a mildly irritated kitten, and that certainly doesn’t up the creep factor.
- Scott Weinberg
FEARnet

I always knew I was going to see another Hannibal Lecter movie, but did it have to be the Muppet Baby version of Hannibal Lecter?
- Willie Waffle
WaffleMovies.com

Norbit
Directed: Brian Robbins
Starring: Eddie Murphy, Thandie Newton

Eddie Murphy plays Norbit was raised by a Chinse family after being abandoned. Later on, his luck doesn’t improved when he’s forced to marry a huge, mean woman (also played by Eddie Murphy).

RT Score: 9%
RT Consensus: Though Eddie Murphy gives it his all, Norbit’s material is crass and largely unfunny.

In Norbit, Eddie Murphy is like a xylophone player who keeps banging away on the same two discordant notes; unfortunately, those monotonous, off-key tones are the characters he’s playing.
- Owen Gleiberman
Entertainment Weekly

It probably isn’t possible for a single movie to reverse all social progress made since the civil-rights era, but Norbit, the latest broadside from Eddie Murphy, does its best to turn back the clock.
- Scott Tobias
Onion AV Club

A film that seems more like an act of revenge against womankind than an extra-broad comedy where the star dresses up in drag.
- Ethan Alter
Film Journal International

Surely some humanitarian organization will recognize the selflessness with which Murphy has taken three of the movie’s major roles, thus saving two other actors from a nasty black mark on their résumés.
- Sam Adams
Los Angeles Times

From start to finish, Norbit is dismally unfunny, inspiring this Sign of the Apocalypse observation: Big Momma’s House 2 was better.
- John Beifuss
Commercial Appeal (Memphis, TN)

Limited Releases

The Lives of Others
Directed: Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck
Starring: Martina Gedeck, Ulrich Muehe

Five years before the Wall falls down in East Berlin, a loyalist hopes to improve his career by spying on an activist playwright and actress couple. While watching and listening to them, he realizes his own life is empty and he starts to rethink what he is doing for his country.

RT Score: 92%
RT Consensus: An emotional political drama with an intelligent script that doesn’t prey on the audience’s emotions.

Von Donnersmarck has crafted the best kind of movie: one you can’t get out of your head.
- Peter Travers
Rolling Stone

The filmmaker’s control of story and pacing is so wily, his script so literate (in his feature debut, no less), that to reveal much more would interfere with the thrill of the tentacled plot’s twists.
- Lisa Schwarzbaum
Entertainment Weekly

Foregoes all the pyrotechnics of flashy thrillers and high-strung spy mysteries for something that gets under the skin. A highly intelligent character drama that passes through the brain before reaching the heart.
- Boyd van Hoeij
europeanfilms.net

A neatly crafted thriller with first rate acting, directing and writing combined with spy paraphernalia and political intrigue. Fully deserving of its status as Germany’s Best Foreign Film Oscar nominee.
- Ron Wilkinson
Monsters and Critics

A refreshing alternative to the whimsical and nostalgic look back on Communist life in Good Bye Lenin!
- Kent Turner
Film-Forward.com

 

Burning Annie
Directed: Van Flesher
Starring: Jay Paulson, Gary Lundy

A college kid’s obsession with Annie Hall is taking over his life and ruining any relationship he might have.

RT Score: 29%

For all the shallowly witty banter, Max and company are even less interesting than Annie and Alvy.
- Maitland McDonagh
TV Guide’s Movie Guide

The movie has its moments of comedic brilliance — just not quite enough of them.
- Steve Rhodes
Internet Reviews

Burning Annie has funny moments, but it suffers from an overflow of characters.
- V.A. Musetto
New York Post

Pic relies on nerdy world-weary irony to carry the day, but doesn’t convincingly draw its characters.
- Ronnie Scheib
Variety

Even with a look at many of these people s relationship problems, there s nothing remotely interesting to listen to when they talk.
- Rory L. Aronsky
Film Threat

The Last Sin Eater
Directed: Michael Landon
Starring: Louise Fletcher, Henry Thomas

When someone dies, a sin eater eats their sins. A girl wants her sins eaten while she is still alive.

RT Score: 19%
RT Consensus: This earnest Christian parable is undone by its pompous dialogue and cheap FX.

The look of The Last Sin Eater is muddy and indiscriminately focused. The camera always seems to be too far off when you wish to get a better look and too close when you wish that it would point at anything other than what s in the frame.
- Marjorie Baumgarten
Austin Chronicle

It s stunning how flat and lifeless this film is, and we won t even talk about the chintzy special effects. Another cynical God-market outing from the folks at Fox Faith.
- Jason Ferguson
Orlando Weekly

A strong story is hindered here by on-the-nose dialogue and melodramatic delivery that makes it seem more like a pulpit-pounding sermon than a slyly subtle parable.
- Chad Greene
Boxoffice Magazine

The problem isn’t Sin Eater’s Christian theme — in fact, the idea of a community shifting from paganism to Christianity is promising — but that the movie can’t find a way to integrate that theme into its story.
- Chris Hewitt (St. Paul)
St. Paul Pioneer Press

The film’s rhythm drags. And [director] Landon uses the ‘when in doubt, pump up the score’ method for signaling Cadi’s emotions.
- Lisa Kennedy
Denver Post