Tobasco makes it better!  I just thought I'd throw that in, not enough people are up in the know with how good Tobasco Sauce makes things taste. I'll put it on anything, steak, cereal, ice cream, you name it...no wonder I'm a bit funny in the head. They also sponser Van Halen's bass player Mike Anthony. Tops. Ok lets not muck about...

Sorority Boys - stars Barry Watson, Michael Rosenbaum, Harland Williams

I wasn't expecting much when we hired this, although the previews did elude to some funny stuff. I'm really not sure how to go about this, there weren't any surprises, nothing original, borrowed heavily from Animal House - the original and the best as far as frat movies go. Dave, Adam and Doofer make up the social committee in KOK House, one of those terribly juvenile institutions you see in these american college movies. They play drinking games, host massive parties, womanise the cheer leaders who of course let them, and fire dildo's through rival house windows. Nothing knew there. Money goes missing from the House safe, they're blamed even though they've been set up, and set about proving their innocence before their futures are irreversably changed (for the worse apparantly) forever. They do this by passing themselves off as women to enter a nearby girls-only frat house. Riiiiiight.

You don't need to hear this do you? Yeah nah, I agree. There is one thing that bamboozled me about this flick, every member of this KOK frat house (I forget what it stands for) is ugly, every one of them. I'm no connoisseur of male personages - not that there's anything wrong with that - but yeah, these guys were dog ugly. So what sort of women do you think they turned into? Ugh! There's heaps of failed slapstick, potentially good jokes turned bad, and re-runs of penis jokes we've seen far too often. Its crap, 2 stars.

Reign Of Fire - stars Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey

Since the previews of this movie came out started running some time ago, I'd been saying "what a crock this movie looks like". As time wore on, the previews wore me down, I started thinking I'd like to watch it, despite a shaky story line it did actually look very impressive. So I watched it. This might contain spoilers if you wanna see it, if so, best you skip this.

Ok so its the future at some point and dragons have surfaced to spawn and reak havoc on little ol' earth. Bummer. Quinn is the leader of a band of survivors who have taken refuge in a castle of some description, spruced up with some home made defence mechanisms. Quinn is the dude who first discovered the re-awakened dragons back in the day, before everything went Mad Max and got torched. Denton Van Zan is this post-apocalyptic self-professed dragon slayer who wanders the land searching for the sole male dragon (I'll get to that in a sec) in order to kill it, and therefore end the breeding cycle of these creatures. These two don't get on that great, but team up anyway to bring down said beast.

Putting aside that this is complete fantasy, it still struggles. The "fact" that these creatures have multiplied exponentially under the guise of one male is pretty hard to swallow, the theory being that the females go around laying hundreds of eggs, and when the male happens to be cruising past, he fertilises them. Now these things are world wide, what sort of mileage is this guy racking up. Next up is these people are really stuggling to keep food stocks of any kind, and their only vege patch is located some way from their castle strong-hold...why not actually put the vege patch within the castle walls guys, then you won't have to risk life and limb to go get your tomatoes. Even worse again is that despite this, they have an abundance of fresh water. From where? They're miles from any ocean and there isn't exactly a pristine lake nearby that they can pump it from. Oh and you'll love this, there's one point where they liken the previous reign of the dragons being the reason the dinosaurs became extinct causing the subsequent ice age. If nothing else, I haven't heard of a script trying to change how the dinosaurs died out, though I'm torn if I like that or not. Still, worthy of mention.

I didn't like this movie for one reason, in my eyes Dragons are good, not bad. Similarly with Dungeons and Dragons (which was appauling by anyone's movie standards anyway), the fact that Dragons are depicted as evil and dark and destructive just doesn't gel with me. So Reign Of Fire loses points from me straight away. Then there are the many (I've only pointed out a few) plot holes to go along, more points to the negative. But on the other side of the coin, some spectacular special effects, I particularly liked the scene with the Arc Angels, and all the dragon images were really well done. A quick word on the acting, it was fine with what they had to work with, which was the sensible poms dealing with the gusto of americans - seems the stereo types are perpetuated, even in the unrealistic future. And the lighting is...well not there lets just say. The whole film is really dark, there are points when you have problems working out what's going on.

DVD Extras: there's a great look at the making of this flick, particularly interesting is how they created the fire breathing, very impressive. Points to the positive there. Overall, my personal dislike of dragon-libel shouldn't discourage you from an ok fantasy flick that looks great and sounds even better. 3 stars.

American Outlaws - stars Colin Farrell, Scott Caan, Ali Larter, Gabriel Macht, Timothy Dalton

This is brilliant. Admittedly I'm a fan of the old wild west, something about guns and shooting them that really appeals to me. No, I'm not condoning war with Saddam, but when it comes to six shooters in the wild west, bring it on. Last decent Western I saw would've been...ah hell I can't remember. I remember loving Tombstone and can't say I've seen anything similar since. Hhmm, might go investigate that now...The Unforgiven was pretty good too, didn't mind that.

Its a no-brainer with a lot of gusto that reworks the stereotype of outlaws really nicely. We're in the land of the Jesse James gang - "shouldn't it be the Younger/James Gang? We outnumber you three to two" - with bank robberies and shoot outs and possies and classic one liners, but this has a really updated feel to it. The characters are hip without losing their old-time sensibilities, the action is second to none and they've stayed true to the history of this tale without rehashing.

Its the little things: the wanted posters they find as time goes on provide some really classic moments, the banter about what they should be calling themselves, the innocent-come-whily nature of each character is great. Its refreshing, that's the word I'm looking for. Its Bad Boys for the 1800's. And you want action? Some of the scenes sit you back in the chair, loads of guns and explosions and some nice moves put on by all involved. And the bad guy? Well he's kind've fond of our band of outlaws, I think that improves the flavour a little more. 4 stars.

Minority Report - stars Tom Cruise, Max von Sydow, Colin Farrell

Before I go on, I'd rate this the best, most original sci-fi I've seen in a long time, if not ever. Kudos to Spielberg on bringing this book to the big screen!

Within 30 seconds of this flick starting, my head was hurting. It hurtles along at a pace I've never experienced before. The dialogue, the environment, you can't miss a thing. Put it this way, we'd just sat down for dinner and pressed play, and in-between glances to my plate to fork something up, I'd looked back up and missed crucial footage. Unbelievable. I think I broke into a sweat at one point.

The storyline I won't go into, she's a doozy and if I started whole-heartedly it'd take me a page. Probably. Its the year 2054, Detective Anderton is head of the Precrime Division, a law enforcemnt project that relies on the future premonitions of three "precogs" to stop murders before they occur. One day Anderton himself finds he is to be arrested for murder, and the plot thickens. That's it in a nutshell, trouble is this nut is bloody HUGE. We're talking a really really big thing here.

A couple of other things that will help here, the "precogs" are human, at no point are there aliens or super powers or comic book fantasies (other than seeing into the future, if that's to be considered as one). Also, this film didn't get bogged down in the future's AI potential (pun kind've intented as Spielberg was behind the lens on AI as well). So on one hand we're dealing with some very new and very advanced technology, on the other, its steeped in reality so you can quite happily go along with this vision.

Again, blink and you'll miss something, have a chat with someone else in the room, you'll miss something. I seriously have not had to work that hard in a movie ever. It doens't keep this up the entire film - or does it? - because after a while you're in the zone. So if it didn't slow down, I wouldn't notice. Really top stuff.

Even though you probably could've put anyone in front of the camera to play these parts, I'd have to say Tom does a really good job. I'm not a Cruise fan, always thought he brought too much spoilt brat to his roles (Top Gun, Days Of Thunder, you name it) but some of his latest stuff has really impressed (Vanilla Sky, the MI movies, Magnolia), this included. The support are impressive also, but the acting and delivery is not down to the actors, but the director. I go back to being able to put anyone in those roles, I think this shows just how well Steven shines here.

Its visually and sonically spectacular, painting a 2054 that's clean and streamlined and although ultra modern, there are still the old staples like Georgian style houses, parks and the country, and people piling onto the subway to commute. I guess it adds to the believability. I thought the shopping mall had a nice touch incorporating the eye-scan technology. But the whole flick is like this, its one of those movies where things are happening in the background all the time and its hard to take it all in on the first go.

I'm going to try something interesting here, and if Marcus will oblige, I'd love for him to send out a rebuttle to this. We watched this together and saw very different movies. I saw originality, where he saw borrowings from several flicks. The debate raged until we decided that neither was going to sway the other, if you've ever seen Marcus and I go nuts like this, you'll know how it went the other night, lol. I won't go into any of his theories, because they're his and only he should explain them, but suffice it to say that where he saw parallels to Blade Runner, The Fifth Element and at least two others that I can't recall right now, I saw none. The only one that sprang to mind at all for me, until he mentioned those, was "Time Cop" - which ran a similar concept of using time travel to prevent crime happening. But even then it didn't make me think "oh that's just like...". No. What I watched I felt like I hadn't seen before.

Marcus will be back on board come Monday, I'm hoping he might get time to put something together for us. This isn't a competition of whose right and whose wrong, not at all, but with this movie in particular I would love for a rebuttle to give you guys a much better opinion of the flick, given two very different visions of it. Even moreso, the fact that I reckon this would be a good exercise should tell you this movie is a keeper, regardless of what you see it to be. Leave it at that, 4 stars.

Dragonfly - stars Kevin "Costly" Costner

Do you cringe at the thought of Kevin Costner movies? I must admit I do, but then again some of my favourite alltime movies have been Costly's; The Untouchables, No Way Out, his fascination with baseball in Bull Durham, Field Of Dreams and even more recently For The Love Of The Game (I dug that), and even Tin Cup was a top flick in my eyes. Trouble is, inbetween all that he went off the rails; Dances With Money, Watermoney and The Postmoney. Not only were they torture on his pocket, but the viewer's numb asses as well. So for me its always been buyer beware with Costly.

Here he plays a doctor who, after losing his wife in an accident in Venezuela 18 months prior, works himself to the bone to keep himself from losing his mind. Then his wife starts contacting him from the other side through the near-death experiences of patients at his hospital. Oh yeah, and their bird. But what is she trying to tell him? That's the biggy here.

I fought hard to avoid thinking "oh crap, Costly got a hold of that bit of the script", or "oh crap, Costly's working the camera", caus' this movie does stray a little into where he's been before - but then rights itself pretty much straight away. Phew, nice work everyone. I tell you what though, this movie really has its peaky moments, and that in itself is winning points here. No meed mentioning acting and lighting and all that guff, its run of the mill, but this thing sent pins and needles down my back at least half a dozen times through sheer frightage. Classic moment is where his bird, who incidentally would only ever talk to his wife, starts talking in the middle of the night, as if the wife had just walked into the house. Holy crap! In that respect this flick is a bit What Lies Beneath, which had some lovely little peaky bits - no, I said peaky, not perky, you guys and your gutter minds ;-)

This movie wins points for originality, not being overly Hollywooded, and spunk. It loses points for a pretty out there ending. Costly was ok, his usual self, but that's to be expected, c'mon, leopards and spots and all that. 3 and a half stars.

Take care all, enjoy.

BH