Art House in the Middle of the Street #0: The End's Not Near, It's Here

The end is here. The Earth is one continuous, blighted landscape. Fossil fuels are as distant a memory as the great prehistoric beasts from which they originated. The wastes are ruled by marauding psychopathic biker gangs. Either that or a somewhat minor culture blog is calling it quits. I can't quite remember.

Ending a feature mid-stream as I'm doing with Art House is a somewhat disappointing resolution. Then again, I really only proposed the thing so I could have an excuse to watch a Janus movie every week. And because I still own the box, I could ostensibly keep doing that. Chances are, though, that I probably won't.

Why not? With a few purely enjoyable exceptions (Hitchcock's The 39 Steps, Cocteau's Beauty and the Beast), the movies contained in "Essential Art House" aren't what you'd qualify as "easy watches." They can be agonizingly slow (Ozu's Floating Weeds) or terrifyingly sere (Ichikawa's Fires on the Plain).

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Movie Review: Captain America: The First Avenger

I received this poster as a consolation prize for
having to sit through the 3D version of the film...

I've never followed Captain America, either through the 210 million copies of his comic books that have flown off newsstand shelves since his first appearance in 1941, or through the various movie serial and television adaptations that have popped up since then.  Until a week ago, pretty much my only exposure to Captain America in any type of media was that one episode of the X-Men animated television series* that shows a flashback of Wolverine fighting alongside the First Avenger himself back in the "Big War." (You'll of course remember that Wolverine is actually much older than he looks, and that his mutant healing power keeps him young and fresh... insert nerdy guffaw here.)

* Before I continue, let me just say that I'm so happy that episodes from this solid show are easily available online, without having to trudge through the various incomplete bootleg versions on the YouTubes. The above-linked episode is from the latter half of Season 5 where animation quality suffered  as they were rushing to complete their various storylines before the show ended. But many of the earlier episodes are extremely well done and deal with more advanced and deep themes than you'd expect from a typical Saturday morning cartoon. I'd wholeheartedly recommend it; several steps below Batman: The Animated Series, of course...

Thus when I saw Captain America: The First Avenger last Thursday at the Arclight Hollywood (but not in the Dome), I was able to approach the story fresh, with no preconceived notions instilled by pesky, more original versions of the story. I was able to put myself squarely and firmly in the hands of Paramount Pictures and director Joe Johnston's 21st Century interpretation of the character. And I must say, I was not disappointed.

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Movie Review: Tekken: Blood Vengeance

Charge Shot!!!'s esteemed co-editor Craig and I made a man-date to see a dumb movie. The plan, originally, was to see Transformers: Dark Moon Rising (or whatever it's called). But it seemed the universe had other plans for us. Because yesterday, at 7:30pm, in selected movie theaters all across the nation a special, stupid, crazy, confounding film aired for one night only. Last night we happened upon Tekken: Blood Vengeance in 3D, and I don't know about Craig but I don't think I'll ever be the same.

Here's what I knew about the Tekken video game franchise before going to see the movie. 1. It was one of those serious fighting games. The kind where smashing buttons would only get you past the first round at an arcade. 2. There was some weird half-man, half-leopard guy you could play as. 3. There were bears. I went into the movie expecting to be somewhat confused. Luckily for me, the movie featuring characters from Tekken had very little to do with the video games! There wasn't even a Tekken Tournament!

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A Decade of Dreck #59: Modigliani

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

Ah, the starving artist: you are torn between your passion for your art and a world that doesn't understand your genius. Must you compromise your vision to stay afloat or will you die knowing you've changed the world? Nobody makes movies about the former, so if you please, you may begin hacking up blood due to Consumption at your leisure.

Yes, it's that very fact, nobody makes movies about sell-outs, everybody makes movies about crazy artists who upend their field, that doomed Modigliani from the start. Sure, it could be relatively easy to make a movie about the life of the Italian painter, he certainly has a decent enough life story, but why do it well when you can just do it? That might require something like giving some thought to it, having some talent, and scripting interesting characters we care about for reasons other than that their works hang in the MoMA!

Amadeo Mogigliani certainly deserves a fancy historical biopic as much as, if not more than, any other modern artist. It has all the elements that make the fancy historical biopic film interesting: doomed love, genius, a captivating setting, famous friends- it should be pretty simple to make a halfway decent one of these things, just take the formula for Frida and change the names and you've got it!

I jest of course, this was probably exactly what the people behind Modigliani did, and this was the crappy end result.

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What If Rupert Murdoch’s Empire Were Hacking All The Way Down?

Rupert Murdoch owns a lot. That sentence doesn’t even need an indirect object. He simply owns a lot. Of newspapers, of movie studios, of television networks, of television programs, of websites, of magazines, of record labels. He even owns fifty percent of Australia’s National Rugby League. Chances are that of the thousands of pieces of content you interact with everyday, a good third to one-half of them link back to him in some sort of gold-plated game of Six Degrees of Rupert Murdoch.

He now owns one hell of a scandal. Murdoch’s News Corporation is the parent company of News International, which published the British tabloid News of the World. It’s recently come to light that News of the World engaged in phone hacking to illegally obtain information. Earlier this month, British prime minister David Cameron called for a massive government inquiry into the affair, hoping to address claims of hacking and police bribery.

High-ranking British police officials are stepping down. Members of Murdoch’s empire are being arrested. The United States is now getting involved: the FBI just began investigating whether or not News Corp’s violated the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act with the alleged hacking and bribery. Oh yeah, and they might have accessed the voicemails of victims of the 9/11 attacks and the 7/7 London bombings.

Rather than wade into this quagmire and attempt to report on it (there’s plenty of that going on already), I’d like to speculate on what the world would be like if such underhanded behavior pervaded the furthest reaches of Murdoch’s empire. Cue the dream sequence music.

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The End of the Midnight Madness: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Part 2

"Wingardium Leviosa!"

"Expelliarmus!"

"Alohomora!"

"Avada Kedavra!"

Hearing those pretend, faux-magicky-language spells shouted out by tween voices, watching them flick their substitute wands (anything from a twig to a drumstick to a chopstick to a sewing needle) with grandiose flourishes, checking out all the robes, cloaks, scarves, glasses, lightning bolts drawn onto foreheads... let's just say it takes me back.  I was there, nine years and four months ago, when the first installment of this storied seven-book, eight-movie franchise exploded onto America's silver screens.  I was standing in line (in those barbaric times before assigned seating), waiting anxiously to rush in and claim the best seats for our group of young, fresh-faced aficionados of witchcraft and wizardry.  I was watching with wonder as Harry Potter's bespectacled face first filled the screen and I was listening as John Williams's majestic score first filled my ears.  And I haven't missed one film since.

Looking out over the sea of eager fans, the old and the young, the costumed and non-costumed, those desperately trying to hold onto one last shred of dignity and those who had long ago abandoned all hope - you could tell it was the end of an era.  Now, almost 20 hours and more than $7 billion later, we were all about to take part in the last midnight showing of the last Harry Potter film EVER.  And you could tell that everyone was thinking the same thing:  IT'S FINALLY ABOUT TO END!

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #16: Fists in the Pocket

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

Fists in the Pocket (1965; dir. Marco Bellocchio)

Why It's Important: A bit tougher to tell with this one. It's easy to point at films like The Bicycle Thieves or Vertigo and explain the cataclysmic impact they had on the history of film. But with the lesser-known films in Janus' box set - and Fists in the Pocket is assuredly one of them - it's a tougher game. The film's Wikipedia entry tells us that author Rex Pickett (Sideways) cites it as a big influence, though similarities between Alexander Payne's 2004 version of Pickett's novel are tough to spot. Rovi hails it as one of the last great classics of the Italian neo-realist period, but the film's bracingly experimental editing and grim absurdity are a far cry from the level-headed reality of a film like The Bicycle Thieves. But other than that, the film is little-known outside of a small circle of dedicated film buffs and the filmmakers it influenced so heavily (Pier Paolo Pasolini, Bernardo Bertolucci). But they sure seem to love it.

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A Decade of Dreck #58: The Celestine Prophecy

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

As a bookseller, there are two types of people I loathe more than all others (the people who buy Amish romance novels I believe to be beneath my hatred): first are the Self-Help people. I really, really dislike having to show someone all the books about "getting motivated" and "dealing with difficult people" and "turning your life around". All I want to say to them is "This is a scam to dupe you out of your money. Get a hobby and stop being so fucking sad all the goddamn time." but of course, that's how you get fired.

Higher up on my shit list (okay, maybe somewhere below the old people who buy books about how the "Moslems are gunna impose Sharia law on America") are the New Age "spiritual" people. There's way too big a market for this sort of shit out there; my store only got rid of the "Crystals" sub-section in the New Age department last week. I already have a pretty dim view of religion in general, but I will say this for Christianity and the others, at least they have their shit together. New Age people are just wackos.

So it is with great delight that I was assigned this week's entry, the king of the Self-Help/New Age hill: a film adaptation of James Redfield's The Celestine Prophecy.

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A Decade of Dreck #57: Because I Said So

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

I must have already commented on this, but the Decade of Dreck throws me up against a lot of niche-marketed films I would have zero interest in save their officially-rated irredeemable crappiness. For example, was there ever a chance in Hell that I could have liked The Perfect Man, Yu-Gi-Oh!: The Movie, or Johnson Family Vacation? Of course not. I'm far outside the target demographics on these (and many more) films in multiple quadrants. Sometimes, this knowledge can help one approach the movie they're about to see ("There's no way I could possibly like this, so I'd better settle in and prepare for shit.") but sometimes, nothing can stop the malaise that a film like Because I Said So can inflict on a human being.

If you couldn't tell by reading and/or viewing anything about this, Because I Said So is explicitly aimed at groups of mothers and daughters going out for a girls' night at the movies. Diane Keaton plays Daphne, a mother of three grown women who can't help but meddle in their private lives. Having seen the elder two married off, she now shifts her attention to Milly (Mandy Moore), her youngest. Having just broken up with her boyfriend, Milly is, in Daphne's eyes, in critical danger of dying alone. She thus sets out to set her up with two potential love interests only to find everything crashing down for humorous effect as her terrible interference spurs her brood to rally against her. Jesus, this is bad.

After every laugh line in the trailer, you can tell some Universal executive said "Ok, now the women in the audience should say something like 'OMG, that is totally something Mom would do!'" at a board meeting. Just watch the embedded trailer down there. Seriously watch it. Try not to kill your family afterwards.

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The Allure of a Great Summer Movie

I'm spending the next two weeks with my family at a nice little beach near Milton, DE. The sun rises and sets beet red on the horizon. Warm bay water laps softly at the sandy pebble beach. This is all fine, ideal, actually, but there's no boardwalk, no nearby amusements, nothing really to do at night outside of the house. So we've taken to watching movies that everyone can enjoy. Movies that must appeal to vacationers between the ages of 17 and 45.

Yesterday alone we watched both The Birdcage and Apollo 13. These two very different movies had more in common than you might imagine. Both were perfect, in some intrinsic way, beach watching movies. Yes, one was a humorous look at the struggle constantly facing the GLBT community while the other was about this time we didn't make it to the moon but we also didn't kill anyone. Yes, one is a comedy while the other is a period piece. But something thread those two together and when it hit me I was a little shocked. Both involved one-time masters of their craft, in their prime, acting their hearts out to tremendous results.

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Film Review: "The Tree of Life"

Terrence Malick is often cited as an example of the classic Hollywood auteur, and he does his best to cultivate his eccentric image accordingly. So he does things like listen to Green Day in the editing room, crow about the merits of Zoolander, and, most nostably, disappear for decades at a time. So when it was announced that The Tree of Life, a movie that Malick had been purportedly working on since the 70s, was finally being shot, film buffs reacted with anticipation and the remarkable patience that is required for any Malick endeavor.

Now the director's possible magnum opus is slowly wending its way to a hippie arthouse theater near you, with a marketing campaign by Fox Searchlight stressing how trippy the whole experience is. If you're wondering what this movie is about, you're already asking the wrong question. It's not really "about" anything, but in the same way that a painting or a symphony is not "about" anything - the movie prefers to dwell on themes and recurring images, rather than going through the standard narrative motions.

 

But, briefly, The Tree of Life spends the bulk of its time showing the lives of three young boys growing up in Waco, Texas in the 1960s. Their father is strict; not abusive, but terrifying to the young boys all the same. Their mother is quiet, submissive, and loving. In between these dreamlike sketches of growing up, we see one of the boys living the modern day, coping with the death of his brother and his relationship with his parents. Oh, and there's the creation of the universe. And dinosaurs. And a bunch of barefoot people on a beach hugging. And a wavy thing of light that may or may not be God. This ain't your standard coming of age story.

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A Decade of Dreck #56: Godsend

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

Scary little kids are going to be the death of horror movies, I swear to God. Once, long ago, a spooky kid could give you some genuine scares. Think back to Damien in The Omen, or those terrifying girls from The Shining (still one of the scariest things I've ever witnessed in a film). But somewhere in time, everything went off the rails and there were way too many scary kid movies; I blame The Sixth Sense.

Kids can be scary: something about that combination of supposed innocence and our inability to, you know, kill them, compounds to make a murderous/Satanic child one of the freakier things your horror movie protagonist could go up against. But of course, once you let the evil kitten out of the bag, you wind up with diminishing returns; hence, Godsend.

Everything about Godsend feels like disappointment. The movie is a ninety minute shrug. Look at the cast: Greg Kinnear? The man might as well hyphenate his name to "Greg Kinnear-What Is He Doing In This?". Rebecca Romijn? Having come of age during her tenure as Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue cover model, she is a very important woman in my life, but a great actress she is not. Robert De Niro? What was his last great movie? Casino? Couple this a tired trope and you have the makings for a Decade of Dreck entry.

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Sunday Reading: Filmmaker Liz Garbus on Bobby Fischer

I’ve never been great at chess. I like it well enough. I enjoy the strategy, the cool-headed combat. The potential moveset feels both limitless and incredibly specific. Then there’s the aesthetic, the trappings of the Renaissance - when kings and queens did more than give speeches and get married.

I’ve just never been able to think sufficiently in advance. I can’t retain a strategy once I’m in the thick of battle. Put bluntly: I’m no Bobby Fischer.

Bobby Fischer, the chess star of the twentieth century, shone incredibly bright as a prodigy before burning out amid paranoia and disillusionment. The United States wielded him like a weapon in the Cold War, fighting the Soviets on the chess board rather than across the globe. Fischer would later come to despise the United States, even calling into a radio show post-9/11 to say that “what goes around, comes around.”

Academy Award-nominated documentary filmmaker Liz Garbus’s Bobby Fischer Against The World (recently on HBO) chronicles Fischer’s ascent and decline. In an interview with Paste, Garbus spoke about what the crucible of success in the spotlight can do:

“You see that in other disciplines as well, great artists who go crazy, or composers, or child actors today. I think we see it across disciplines, and it’s not unique to chess, but that expertise and mastery, and especially from such an early age that mono-focus on your chosen field, can be tough on people. Especially people that have heightened sensitivities or tendencies toward mental illness. Not developing those other parts of yourself can be dangerous. And Bobby himself says when he gets to Iceland, "I thought maybe I could write songs, but then I realized I had nothing to say because I haven’t lived." Bobby himself was aware of the fact that he had no other life outside chess. So when he reached his life’s ambition, he had nowhere to go.”

Garbus set out to make her film after reading Fischer’s obituary, and it sounds like she’s done everything she could to paint a fair portrait of a man who left this world an angry, unlikable ex-pat. All this Fischer talk may even make me try chess again.

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Movie Review: Super 8

So, this is summer. As time goes by and one gets farther and farther away from their school days salad years, summer seems to be less of a thing. When you're a kid, this means there's no school, you can play outside, and you can see your friends whenever you want. By adulthood, summer tends to mean nothing other than it getting hot out and gas prices going up. You still have to go to work every day but at least you can drink on a patio.

I think I must have really become a grown-up this year: the scale I use to determine this is that this is the first year I can remember where I was more excited about the Awards Season Oscar contenders than about the big summer tentpoles. I've always loved summer movies but now Fridays come and go and on many days I couldn't tell you what big blockbuster came out. Wasn't Green Lantern out this weekend? Whatever.

In this day and age of bald face studio calculation, the summer movie experience can be especially soul-crushing. Two months so far has only yielded a handful of memorable movies alongside a veritable barrel full of disappointments and misfires (looking at you Hangover Part 2). And the worst part? They're all sequels or at least tangentially related to a well-established money-making property. Nothing original has come out it years.

And now J.J. Abrams' Super 8 comes along and while "original" might not be the best way to describe it, it's definitely the best movie of the summer so far.

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Modern Day Theme Parks: Where's the Character and the Class?

When I saw J.J. Abrams's Super 8 on Friday, I was excited to see the Amblin Entertainment logo in front of the credits. I'm sure you know the image of Steven Spielberg's production company (or would know it if you saw it - picture provided after the jump): it's the silhouette of that lovable little alien, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, riding in the basket of Elliot's bicycle as they fly in front of the moon. I was never all that attached to the movie itself, but a Spielberg production is always deemed exciting and relevant by the entertainment industry. Plus, it seemed extra relevant for me, because I had plans to visit Universal Studios: Hollywood - where the offices of Amblin are located - the very next day!

But my excitement was quickly replaced by a pang of nostalgic despair. Amblin's offices and the odd souvenir doll are now all that remains of the E.T. tradition at Universal, as the former dark ride bearing its name, E.T. Aventure, shuttered in 2003 to make way for Revenge of the Mummy: The Ride. Wow, talk about backing the wrong franchise. That would be like if Disneyland replaced Star Tours with Avatar: Pandora's Pride. (In fact, Star Tours was just given a recent 3D update, so the comparisons to Avatar are not that far off.)

E.T. Adventure was not an amazing ride, by any means. It didn't have breathtaking visuals or gut-wrenching drops and turns. But it did have character (such as when your multi-person bicycle turns into a spaceship to take you to E.T.'s home planet) and class (such as when an animatronic E.T. personally says goodbye to each and every person on the ride before you disembark). However, progress is progress, and I suppose it's the natural order of things for class and character to gradually give way to thrills and chills. And it's my feeling that the changing layout of the Universal Studios theme park - as well as the evolving slate of Universal's films - reflects that.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #15: The Rules of the Game

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

The Art House is getting an (extreme) makeover! I'm tired of the old format (or lack thereof), so I'm shaking things up: instead of just writing a traditional long-form review, I'm gonna split my pieces into subheadings, a la my fellow blogger Chris Holden.

In terms of formulating the headings themselves, I tried to think about the purpose behind my writing these pieces. After thinking for a few hours and failing to come up with anything other than "to listen to the sound of my own voice," I decided to focus on why you, the reader, should be reading these pieces. What information do you want to know about these weirdo movies full of funny-talkin' foreigners?

I thought about that for a while longer, and after again failing to come up with anything, I just made up some shit. Enjoy.

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A Decade of Dreck #55: 88 Minutes

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

Pity poor Al Pacino. Still widely considered to be one of the greatest living actors of stage and screen, the guy can't seem to pick good movies to star in. His 1970's heyday well behind him, Pacino still pops up in a great film every now and again, but he acts like a major league batting champion: he only scores a hit a third of the time.

The real tragedy that separates much of the Worst of the Worst featured in this project is not just that the films are ineptly scripted, directed, and acted; it's that they oftentimes represent a squandering of prodigious cinematic talent. Any given Syfy Original Movie or Asylum output is truly terrible and worthy of mockery, but at least they're aiming low and have their tongues firmly in cheek (one hopes). A thriller like 88 Minutes, however? It stars Al Pacino.

That's Al Pacino, Academy Award winner. Al Pacino, Michael Corleone. Al Pacino, Method actor extraordinaire. He's definitely above a gimmicky murder mystery. Or is he? I'm sure that if you raised a human being in an isolated bubble and only let them view Al Pacino's films from let's say the 1990's on, they would imagine that he was a moderately talented actor with sparks of greatness, but nothing remarkable. A future answer to a trivia question perhaps. The truth is Pacino, much like his Fokker-fied Godfather co-star Robert De Niro, may be a relic of an earlier era of cinema. Or maybe he's just struggling as he ages. I probably couldn't say, but he surely deserves better than 88 Minutes (or Gigli, for that matter).

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Review: X-Men: First Class

Out of all the Charge Shot!!! writers on our wonderful staff, I wonder if I was the right choice for this review. I don't really know all that much about the X-Men comics (but you can ask me anything about weird second tier Marvel heroes like Sleepwalker or Darkhawk). I grew up, like a lot of us, on the animated series alone. And I have a history of liking any and every type of movie. Be this all as it may, I have seen all four of the other modern X-Men films and this one blows the rest out of the water. No contest, this is the best of the franchise. And you don't have to be a comic fan or purist to like what this movie has to offer. I'm not going to mince words here: this is a cool flick.

I gave an honest go of trying to figure out the actual origins of X-Men. It's the type of thing you have to spend a good week reading and cross-referencing. Some comic fans are bemoaning  the line-up they've put together in this film for the "original" X-Men. But I suppose everyone has a right to complain about everything.

The original line-up in X-Men #1 featured Professor X in charge of Jean Grey, Iceman, Beast (hairless), Cyclops and Angel. The line-up for the new origin film features Professor X leading a young (and good) Mystique, Magneto, Havoc, Banshee, (female) Angel, and Darwin. I'm a fan of a classic story, but this movie has a pretty good line-up of heroes.

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Art House in the Middle of the Street #14: M

There's no grand philosophical project behind Charge Shot!!!'s new feature. Jordasch's mom got him Janus Films' absolutely untouchable Essential Art House box set, and he's going to watch the whole thing. It's a behemoth set, collecting 50 films released since 1956 by one of the first distributors to bring honest-to-goodness world cinema to U.S. shores. The films contained in the collection serve as a crash course in world cinema, encompassing everything from major works of the French New Wave and the Italian Neorealist period to films from lesser-known corners of the filmmaking world, including Brazil and Poland. The collection is 50 discs, weighs 16 pounds, it's dark, and we're wearing sunglasses. Hit it.

Oh the procedural: so formulaic, yet so stunningly popular. The new millennium has yielded an embarrassment of innovative television riches, but it's the procedural that has kept the vast majority of drama-watching Americans enthralled. CBS's slate of grotesque crime dramas has captivated America for the better part of the last decade: CSI, CSI: NY, CSI: Miami, NCIS, NCIS: LA. It almost seems like Jerry Bruckheimer could pick three letters at random and toss a Who song at the front of the credits, and he'd have another hit.

Fritz Lang's M, then, pulls off a neat trick: it is perhaps the founding document of this most odious of genres, and yet it entertained me in a way that no modern crime procedural could approach. It's probably fair to point out that the founders of a particular genre often do it better than any of their imitators, though. If the crime procedural is grunge rock, then NCIS and CSI are Nickelback and Seether.

I guess I found the procedural's Nirvana, then.

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A Decade of Dreck #54: The Perfect Man

Charge Shot!!! is celebrating the end of the decade in the most masochistic way we know how - by watching and writing about the 100 worst movies of the last ten years as defined by film review aggregator Rotten Tomatoes. Click here to see RT's complete list, click here for more about the Decade of Dreck project, and click here to see all of the movies we've done so far.

The Decade of Dreck project takes me to a lot of filmic places I wouldn't normally venture: Yu-Gi-Oh movies, Paris Hilton vehicles, too-many-kids films, Doogal. This week, I go upriver into the heart of darkness that is heartwarming mother/daughter movies. Since I am neither a mother, nor am I a daughter, this one is, once again, outside my area of expertise. There's another one coming up soon, so...ugh.

Remember Hilary Duff? Lizzie McGuire herself? Last time we heard from her here she was one of Christian fundamentalist maniac Steve Martin's dozen children, and apparently 2005 was really a banner year for her because she starred in back-to-back Rotten Tomatoes worst movies of the Aughts!

The Perfect Man (not to be confused with the fourteenth century Sufi philosophical text or the joke from The Venture Bros.) stars Hilary McDuff as Holly, a teenage girl who is sick of her mother (Heather Locklear) moving her and her kid sister to a new town every couple months due to her breaking up with her boyfriends (more on this later). In order to build up her mom's confidence and prevent her from shacking up with the first heartbreak-inducing guy she finds (Mike O'Malley!), Holly invents the titular paragon of masculinity and begins romancing her own mother under via an anonymous secret admirer. But can she keep the charade up? Is Heather Locklear a terrible parent? Do we care?

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