Ninja Ass-in

Fat Ninja (2009)

Starring: Gravy Rain Directed by: McTard Rating: R Genre: Action Other

Review Super Trooper McTard ("V For Vendela") knows where the bodies are buried and disinters them with tremendous style in this thoughtful consideration of the costs associated with living a life of life-taking. Deaf Korean master chef/fashion model Gravy Rain ("Ghostly Vice Cops 4") stars as a man torn between eviscerating people with a curved shiv and growing lavender in the sun-soaked hills of Manitoba (the "Provence" of  western Canada). I won't give away his decision, but if I'd remembered to bring my reading glasses I'm sure I'd be reporting that Calgary will blossom for years to come. Not much more to say about this one, but before I conclude, I'd like to state how optimistic I am about the number of "foodies" making the jump to the big screen. Without food it's unlikely we'd even be an upright species (not enough protein-based energy), so we all owe a big shout-out to those who prepare it in ways that make it palatable.

Friday Night Special - Paved With Good Intentions

On The Road (2009)

Starring: Vigor Morgenstern, Ash "Scrappy" Montana, Charlene Thorzine Directed by: John Hillerman Rating: R Genre: Comedy Other: Scenes of Apocalypse

Friday Night Special - Friday Night Special is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies that we feel may be of particular interest to those special lovers looking for that magical mood-setter of a date flick that just might ignite the passions bubbling under the surface during the last work day of the week. Is this "The One"? Or just "One of Those Things?" Let us be your guide! Review As the happy Mork-slaughtering hobblits sang, "The road goes ever on..." And does it ever in this misguided "reboot" of the popular post-war "Road To..." series. Originally penned by the bumbling Cohen brothers, former Magnum P.I. star John Hillerman churns Bob and Bing's idyllic butter into rancid sour cream, turning Dotty L'Amour-flavored Bali into a scarred earth that appears to have been bump-mapped from Abe Vigoda's tragic face. Vigor Mogenstern, so good as the mentally-challenged boxer in Peter Jackson's remake of "Fat City" is here teamed with enormously talented youngster Ash "Scrappy" Montana as a pair of fathers and sons who traipse across country searching for the last twinkie in the universe. Not a huge hook to hang this four-hundred minute sombrero upon, but Hillerman does what he can with the Cohens' global-warming nonsense. I personally was left with a tremendous sense of unease, which can't have pleased Mr. Walt Disney or his marketing minions beavering away in their fur-lined hidey-holes at their carpal-tunneling adding machines. And, while I reserve the right to disagree with Hillerman's wrong-minded conclusions, I'd fight an eighteen stone she-badger to defend his right to spout them. All in all, this may not be fatback, but rather very lean Canadian bacon. Those on a spiritual diet may be amused. The rest of us will have to exert enough self-control not to kill the theater staff and burn the mutliplex to the ground. And in the end, maybe that is the point Hillerman is after - conscience makes bastards of us all.

Dog Days

Odd Dogs (2009)

Starring: Robin William, John-John Travolta  Directed by: Walter Fagen Rating: PG-13 Genre: Comedy/Drama Other

Review Passion comes in all sizes and shapes but one thing we can all agree upon is that the ineffable spark that separates love from sexual infatuation can often be found in the damndest places. Senior circuit director Walter Fagen ("Wild Dogs", "Talkers", "Walkers", "Walking and Talking", "Old Talkers", "Talking Dogs", "Hog Walkers") helms this beast with the sure authority of a dingo gnawing a lost baby. Master "caster" Keith Wolfe pulled off a major coup landing veterans Robin William ("Shlomo and the Dude", "The Toy") and John-John Travolta ("Tonka Toy: The Movie", "Stayin' Alive!") who star as a pair of travelling salesmen who are purchased at auction by a pair of seven-year-old twins with hair like spun gold and mouths straight out of "The Last Detail." After a series of hijinks simultaneously hilarious and heart-breaking, the two gents are cast adrift on a giant inflatable porpoise where, after seven days and nights sharing a uric nightcap, Travolta breaks down and begins speaking in tongues. I won't give away the ending, but I have to say that watching masters of any field doing what they do at the top of their game - whether its master bantam rooster breeder Anthony de Piante or Japanese submariner Masaji Hiramatsu - is a sincere pleasure that should not be underestimated. It won't change your mind about Jesus, but it just might get you through the night.

The Blonde Leading the Blonde

The Blind Side (2009)

Starring: Sandra Bollock, Chet Atkins, Quintus Virgilius Grammaticus Directed by: "Hancock" Rating: PG-13 Genre: Drama Other: Other-Abledness

Review With the efficiency of a Japanese Lorena Bobbit working the adulterer's table at a Manassas Benihana's the usually workmanlike "Hancock" ("Hancock's Hancock") cuts through the typical Hollywooden nonsense and soars like a great white pigeon against a luminous blue sky. Newcomer Virgilius Grammaticus stars as "Bronco", a former gridiron great who loses his sightedness after trying to go "both ways" in the big game against the big team. Forced into the only life available to the blind - masseusing -  he developes the devastating ability to play both ends against the middle. Through Hancock's masterful montages (underscored by The Mormon Tabernacle Choir's breathtaking polyphonic "Walking on Sunshine") "Bronco" discovers that as long the middle holds, the ends will grow green shoots, and life will not be denied. Sandra Bollock and Chet Atkins are wonderful as Grammaticus' parents who, though initially rejecting him when he trades the pigskin of the football for the goatskin of a massage table, each lend him a single eye so he throw the big pass that makes the scoreboards explode in ecstasy. Just when you thought the sports movie was the runner who stumbled, "Hancock" forces open its lips, runs his tongue around its mouth clearing obstacles and breathes the sweet Orbit-gum-enhanced breath of life into its stunted lungs. Job well done!

Woolly Thinking

The Mammoth (2009)

Starring: Gael Maria von Sayers, Michelle Williams, Krull Directed by: Lucas Tannerson Rating: NR Genre: Serial Drama Other

Review Like the temptation just before the last temptation of Jesus, I so wanted that tingly, ants-in-your-pants falling-in-love feeling from Lucas Tannerson's latest. Instead I left the theater feeling like I once felt after a dream where I was wearing my sister's underwear, and she was still in it. Tannerson ("Show Me Yours", "Fingerlings") manages to weave 345 completely separate and totally distinct storylines into a coherent whole that slowly, then suddenly reveals what God meant when he invented the platypus. Gael Maria von Sayers ("Loving Me a Dead Woman", "Los Dos Novias de Los Dos Hermanos Sacerdotes") is excellent as an absent-minded archaeologist who, while in the midst of reconstructing an ancient Giant Cowasaurus, remembers that he's left his daughter with Michelle Williams. The ensuing tragedy seems just a little off, like a bar of cream cheese with a small patch of blue-green fuzz. Not inedable, but not really appetizing. Tannerson is a skeeballer who valiantly tries for the 50 hole, but ends up with a fistful of nothing. That said, it's great to see the fabulous Charles Ruggles again, even if only as a bearskin rug.

From The Vault - Endgame

Up In Smoke (1978)

Starring: Chich and Chach Directed by: Sir Peter Hall Rating: PG-13 Genre: Drama Other

From The Vault - From The Vault is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies past that we feel might interest, provoke or dismay our readers. Review Austere dark comedy from the master of misery stars siamese twins Chich and Chach as a pair of ne'er-do-wells trading insults and a kind of desperate love as they wait for their "pusher" to arrive. While not for everyone, those who are willing to brave the spare landscape of the mind will not be disappointed. Bravo Sir Peter!

The Day The Earth Jumped About

2012: The Year That Time Forgot (2009)

Starring: John Le Cuisak, Tandy Beal Newton, Rebecca Romero Directed by: Wolfgang Petersen Rating: PG-13 Genre: Action Other

Review Like an MMO (massively mutiliated objects) version of Gnip-Gnop played with the flayed corpses of people not beautiful enough to become movie stars and too dumb to stay away from the John Robert Powers modeling agency, Wolfgang Petersen's 2012: The Year That Time Forgot keeps score the old fashioned way. Petersen, who is perhaps best remembered for his taut submariner flick Das Boot (The Boot), appears to have taken long-time friend and confident Uma Merkel's advice and "gone for the gold," with a film so dumb it it should have been narrated by Wilf Errel's belly button. Former teen idol John Le Cuisak ("The Seven Kingdoms", "Wish I'd Said That") drops lead guitar duties just long enough to dance, prance and dangle puppet-like in front of a "green" screen so that he can be digitally inserted into whatever action-packed scenic fissure Petersen thinks he might fit, which may account for his growing likeness to a vagrant stumbling into a walrus pelt enrobed in salt-encrusted chocolate. Clearly my mind wandered into sad and gossipy places while considering Mr Petersen's filmus terribilus.  With all that said, what ends up on the screen is palpably thrilling with (spoiler alert!) special effects unrivaled since "The Dark Crystal" stole the souls of young 'uns everywhere. As the "Dramatics" so ably put it lo those many years ago "if what you're looking for is real loving, then what you see is what you get." How many of our significant others can live up that? If The Germinator can deliver us for four or five hours from the tragedy that is global warming by presenting the earth destroyed in both fire and ice, I say bring on like a naughty spanking to a rich, impotent old man!

Friday Night Special - Nine Is Too Much

The Ninth Song (2004)

Starring: Modesty Blaise, Rod Snow Directed by: Michael Vintnerbottom Rating: Unrated Genre: Explicit Romance Concert Movie Other: Distasteful Sexual Scenes

Friday Night Special - Friday Night Special is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies that we feel may be of particular interest to those special lovers looking for that magical mood-setter of a date flick that just might ignite the passions bubbling under the surface during the last work day of the week. Is this "The One"? Or just "One of Those Things?" Let us be your guide! Review As a sage of my aquaintance once told me after visiting a special "show" in Tijuana "just because you can do something doesn't mean you should." Though I've seen dogs bathe parts of their bodies that make me question how there can be a God, I never quite understood the wisdom of this magus until I watched Michael Vintnerbottom's "The Ninth Song." Young hairless monkeys Modesty Blaise and Rod Snow "star" as a couple who meet at a "Wham" concert and spend the next seventy minutes playing tetris with various body parts, some of which I found myself unable to identify even on my anatomically-correct BatKat-customized Barbie and Ken dolls. Vintnerbottom, whose previous efforts included "The Laurence Sterne Experiment" and "Legend of Boggy Creek: The Road to Guantanamo" has produced something so romantically reductive that it makes the funk band Slave's "Snap Shot" seem like something Elizabeth Barett Browning might have sent Robert by donkey. It might be appropriate if you're studying for a pre-med midterm. Otherwise give this one a pass and download "Romancing the Stones."

Area Dumby-Dumb

The Four Kinds (2009)

	Starring: Millyov Smirnov, Will Paxton Directed by: Olatunde! Rating: R Genre: Documentary Other
Review I'm familiar with Man, Woman and late-era Billy Murray, but former "Flaming Drums" congero-turned-director Olatunde would have us believe that, like a german linguist, carrot-topped gargoyle Millyov Smirnov has discovered yet another gender lurking in the weeds. After Rue Paul and former Senator William Proxmire, what more is there to say about alien abductions? Nothing. So I won't.

A Very Wary Christmas

A Christmas Carol (2009)

	Starring: Jim Carrot, Colin Filth Directed by: Steven Spielberg Rating: G Genre: Holiday Other
Review Talk about Christmas in July! Hollywont's atheists refuse to learn - it's all about the scripts folks! And this one reads like A Very Brady Christmas penned by Sherwood Schwartz's lobotomized devil twin. Jim Carrot looks old, sad and tired, and Colin Filth is almost unrecognizeable as a singing andiron. Should have gone straight to the vidiots!

See Me Twat!

After enduring a virtual festival of mockery from my nephew Wes, I've entered the "twentieth century" and begun twattering. Those of you who have been loyal readers know how I value my privacy, but there seems no reason not to share both my love of film and my hatred of the phony hypocrisy of the "goofs in suits" who talk on their "I-Phones" while driving (illegally!) in their "Beemers" and "Audis".

So feel free to join me in showing Wes "how it is done" and don't hesitate to twat me back! I can be found on Twatter under my "handle" oswaldfilms.

All Hands on Deck!

Synecdoche, New York (2008)

Starring: Philip Seymour Damon, Parker Posey, Dame May Witty Directed by: I. Charles Kaufman Rating: R Genre: Comedy Other

Review While I usually seal myself off in the Film Pit to watch movies I'm considering reviewing, I caught this one at my periodontist's on a luscious pre-release pair of Mikimoto Bean I-Glasses. It seemed appropriate to have my gums defiled as I watched I. Charles Kaufman's Synecdoche, New York, a film so moving that I kissed Dr. Singer straight on the lips and asked him to marry me. Philip Seymour Damon ("I, King Kong") stars as a director so talented that he casts himself as everyone in the world, and so lonely that no one can understand him except the little man he keeps in his shirt pocket. And when he lets the little man out onto the palm of his hand, the little man begins to cry. And what does that lonely little man have in its pocketses? Another lonely, weepy little man!. I was reminded of the great Sergei Eisenstein's Battleship Potemkin more than once, though even if prodded with something electric and painful I'm not sure I could say why. Strange though it sounds, Kaufman makes me feel sad that I'm not in his pants. To be honest, due to the double dose of gas the good doctor provided me ("I may have to remove most of your jaw", I think he said at one point) I'm not one hundred percent sure I actually saw this movie, or if it even exists. If not, then I'd like to claim these ideas as my own. Please comment and let me know if I should get on Orbitz immediately and prepare my big pitch to the shark suits!

Friday Night Special - Fly, Robin Fly!

There's Something About Ameilia (2009)

Starring: Hilary Swunk, Sir Richard Gear Directed by: Catherine Breillat Rating: R Genre: Action Other: Female Flying Pantsuit

Friday Night Special - Friday Night Special is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies that we feel may be of particular interest to those special lovers looking for that magical mood-setter of a date flick that just might ignite the passions bubbling under the surface during the last work day of the week. Is this "The One"? Or just "One of Those Things?" Let us be your guide! Review Florid fever-dream troweled onto the screen by mad French pornographic "madame" Catherine Breillat. Hilary Swunk ("Lungs Are The Only Things") stars as a female version of bizarre fascist boytoy Sir Arthur Limburg who decides that she will cure the world of child abusers by flying around it without stopping. Swunk can be touching, particularly when she's dressed in her grey flightsuit, but Sir Richard Gear ("I Love All of Myself So Much", "American Gigolo in Paris") is miscast as a human businessman. And Breillat doesn't seem to understand that flying involves forcing air OVER the wings of the machine until it achieves lift. There's none of that kind of technical detail that would lead us to believe Amelia is actually "flying." Instead, we get endless dull "sex" scenes in which leaden Italian stallion Rico Suave seems bent on exposing his epiglottis to the back row. While it's clear that a woman could indeed fly a plane until it runs out of fuel, I'm not convinced that this woman could carry off such a feat. And without that willing suspension of disbelief that thoughtful spacemonkey Jim Carrey endlessly carries on about, it's difficult to believe that the twenty-five frames that burn our eyes every two seconds cohere into a story that will make us hold it in until we can't hold it in any longer. Verdict? Stay home and delight in the sexy petticoats of Miss Julie Andrews as she seduces the heck out of Dick Vandycke in Chitty-Chitty-Bang-Bang.

I'll Take Door Two, Clive

Le Box (2009)

Starring: Mare Winningham, Tuck Plugsden, James Cocoa Directed by: Richard Keily Rating: R Genre: Thriller Other

Review Put down the crack pipe, Richard! This whacked-out "suspenser" remake of the flick that forced Kim Basinger to buy an entire Georgia town and burn it to the ground, from an unpublished short story by Ernest Hemingway plays like a Twilight Zone episode that lasts for three days and three nights, and then three more days. Disfigured Russian cosmonaut James Cocoa ("Big Night")  rides a frozen urine icicle down from the space station and lands in Winningham and Plugsden's backyard. They discover a strange box in his unconscious space pants and must decide whether to kill him, or kill him and win a million dollars. Should be just what the doctor ordered for Keily, who hasn't been the same since he went through "the change." Check it out!

Afro-Selectric!

My Preciousss (2009)

Starring: Mo'Nique, Jimi Hendrix Directed by: Bill Cosby Rating: R Genre: Drama Other

Review Finally! the kind of meat-and-potatoes movie the old Hollywood  system used to make when the studio heads cracked the whip and actors were told who to date. Director Cosby ("The Love Bug" "Hadrian The Seventh") adapts dessicated Scots landcrab Ewan McGregor's "African Typing Pool" novels into a joyous feast for the whole family. While Africanish people still are not allowed to write about themselves, it's good to see that they have been allowed "behind the camera." Congrats to the Great White Suit who greenlighted this one!

From The Vault - Roman Holiday

Gladiators (2000)

Starring: Rumply Crow, Richard Harris Directed by: Riddidly Scott Rating: R Genre: Action Other

From The Vault - From The Vault is a special feature of Oswald's Screen Scene. Here we present reviews of movies past that we feel might interest, provoke or dismay our readers. Review Director Scott's take on the sword-and-sandals flick plops bloated meat puppet Rumply Crow ("The Fornicators") smack dab in the middle of a Nike commercial, only instead of ripply athletes sweating green mucus, Crow shows his acting chops by spitting out real blood and teeth. Eschewing the traditional fat suit, Crow purportedly put on eighty pounds through daily injections of Crisco, though this doesn't explain the pulsing fat ring around his tonsured skull. I'm not sure about this one. The film's exciting enough, but when emperor Biggus Diccus (played by Smiths lead singer Morrison) nails Crow's bulldog "The Kraken" to the Coliseum and Crow's good eye begins to throb, the Bronsonian fireworks to come are all too obvious. And I cannot decide if the choice of composer Esquivel was inspired or merely mad, but it did provide a odd discordancy to the many an action sequence. There's no question that Scott knows how to play a disembowlment set piece but, as the great Norma Shearer once said "it's the pictures that got small." Look for a cameo by Mike Meyers as an Ethiopian Princess. The man is the Lon Chaney of his generation.

Get Thee Behind Me Bergman

Anti-Christ (2009)

Starring: Wilhelm Dafoe, Carlotta Rampling Directed by: Lar Von Trier Rating: R Genre: Drama Other: Accents

Review Afro-Swedish person Von Trier is a mad genius, whose previous provocations "Motion Sickness", "Dogtown" and the Wilf Errell vehicle "Oldboy" have proven without a doubt that Schopenhauer was right when he complained in his essay on noise that "a wagonful of dung can kill in the bud a thousand minds." His latest, "Anti-Christ", asks the question "is Wilhelm Dafoe a human or is he a muppet formed from the molted remains of some kind of human/insect hybrid"? No easy answers here.  Instead, the chubby Swede with the naturally glossy eyebrows challenges us to watch the screen for five hundred and fify-three straight minutes until we long for the days when human hairs trapped between the celluloid and the projector's lamp jumped and danced for our amusement. Of course Von Trier IS the eponymous anti-Christ of the title. Christ was a gentle, loving man who understood our need for wine at critical times in our gestation. Von Trier wisely offers us no other narcotic than the luminous byproduct of his furious cranium. By the halfway point most of the bussed-in children and their foreign exchange counterparts had already left the theater, and those that remained showered the adults in the first two rows with Jujubees until one elderly gentleman threatened an usher with some kind of wolf-headed cane. And by the time Dafoe's flaking carapace made love to similarly Triscuit-skinned French/English cannibal Carlotta Rampling, one half the crowd was singing Queen's masterpiece "Bohemian Rhapsody" in a round while the other half had pinned the projectionist under the handicapped seating and appeared to be trying to tear him in half with a series of slings made of red whips. It's the kind of thing that won't show up in the box score the next day, but the film-scholar Sabremetricians of the future will surely mark its significance. I had to leave a bit early, but I was definitely curious how it all worked out. Can any filmmaker ask more?