The chickens of Tweedy Chicken Farm are generally content, with the possible exception of Ginger (Julia Sawalha). She seems to be the only one who realizes that things may be fine if you are laying eggs, but as soon as the eggs stop, things aren’t so good for chickens.

Let’s face it, chickens may not be the brightest, but Ginger is a different sort, so she’s constantly planning how to escape from the farm. She just has one problem, and that’s that to get one or two chickens out is easy. To get the whole lot out is a different matter entirely.

One day, as the chickens are going about their normal business, they get a visitor from outside – quite unusual indeed, but even more so because he arrives by flying, and most chickens can’t fly. Ginger is downright ecstatic.

Read the rest of this entry »

When Randall “Memphis” Raines (Nicolas Cage) decided that he was no longer going to steal cars, the reported car theft in the area dropped. Precipitously. But he’s back. Not because he wants to be back, but because he has to be back. It seems that his little brother, Kip (Giovanni Ribisi), has decided to join the family business vacated by his brother.

This is a problem for two reasons. One, because it’s the reason that Memphis left in the first place. Two because Kip isn’t nearly as good as his older brother, and now he’s in big to bloodthirsty Raymond Vincent Calitri (Christopher Eccleston). If Calitri doesn’t get the fifty cars that Kip owes him, he plans on killing Kip. So Memphis decides to come out of retirement for one last boost.

Read the rest of this entry »

Terl (John Travolta) is a Psychlo, one of a race of giant, evil, greedy, beings that have taken over the Earth in the year 3000.

He is also something of an outcast among his own race, which is why he has been stuck in the backwaters, ruling over the dump that is the Earth. But he has a plan to make things worthwhile, for he has determined that the planet contains plenty of gold, and he believes that the man-animals can be trained to help him get it, without any other Psychlos knowing about it. With his fabulous new wealth, he can regain a place of prominence on Psychlo and get off of this rock. But this greed will also be his undoing.

Read the rest of this entry »

This isn’t exactly your father’s X-Men (though they do make a few pokes at the comic here and there, like a reference to their uniforms being made of spandex). If you recall the original lineup, you might think Angel, Beast, Cyclops, Iceman, and Marvel Girl. If you watch this movie expecting to see them, you’ll likely be disappointed.

This is because Angel and Beast are nowhere to be found. Cyclops is here, but has a fairly muted role. Iceman is here as well, but rather than a full-fledged member of the team, he’s a teenager working through his powers. Marvel Girl isn’t mentioned by name, but is instead simply called Jean Grey, her real name. Professor X is certainly around as well. But it’s not the same as the comic, so get that thought out of your head.

Read the rest of this entry »

David (Lochlyn Munro), an apparently struggling comedian, and his girlfriend Sylvia (Kristin Davis) have stopped in Blacktop for a gig. Blacktop seems to be little more than a truck stop, and it’s never really explained why they need a comedy club there.

But excluding that little gaffe, David hurls his insults in the general direction of the audience, which seems to love the jokes – except for Jack (Meat Loaf), who himself is a trucker, and seems to take particular insult to David’s comments, perhaps because of David’s little ditty when Jack starts to talk to Sylvia.

Read the rest of this entry »

Kate (Famke Janssen) has a problem. She has a column due and the one that she’s written isn’t appropriate. What’s worse is that her boss is about to fire her. So she starts talking into one of those little tape records about what has gone wrong with her life to get her where she is now and why she has no experience to write about relationships. It turns out that the problems started on the playground when she was 9.

This is probably the best bit of the movie and it goes downhill from there. We jump forward from there (but not all the way forward to the absolute present) to where she met her big love – Adam (Jon Favreau). Adam was different and swept her off her feet, right out of the arms of someone else who she didn’t like at all and things just took off. But that doesn’t mean that they went well.

Read the rest of this entry »

The tagline for this movie says that it is a comedy that takes place in 24 hours on the Sunset Strip in 1972. I think those facts are correct. Except I don’t recall laughing. So you might not want to consider it a comedy. The trailer mentions that the lives of six friends intersect, except some of them don’t seem to know each other, so I don’t know if that’s exactly true either.

What does appear to be true is that a handful of people (unless you only have five fingers per hand, in which case it might be two handfuls) are living in or about 1972 in the Sunset Strip area of Hollywood, and this movie tells you about what they do during a roughly 24 hour period. What it doesn’t do is say why you should care, and in the end, there didn’t seem to be much reason why you should.

Read the rest of this entry »

Though perhaps not the best movie ever, this Denzel Washington vehicle is certainly a good movie to watch on a lazy weekend afternoon when you’re surfing the channels looking for something to pass the afternoon.

The story centers around a small school that’s suddenly been given a surprise for the new school year – they will be joining together with a black school, and in even more of a surprise, the head coach of the black school will become the head coach of the football team. Needless to say, this doesn’t go over well.

Read the rest of this entry »