with a complete lack of watchable movies at the drive in, this weekend we rented dvd’s and tried for the most part to make them equally crappy. here’s a quick review:

“a sound of thunder” - never heard of this one, but it was on the new release wall and had edward burns and ’sir’ ben kingsley in it, which made me giggle because of his recent appearance on the sopranos, which was hysterical. now that i think about it, i have no idea where they got the title for this paradox of time travel flick, but it was like a low-budget b movie. the special effects were so bad! they were in the future going on safaris to the past, but it looked more like it was made in the past trying to look like it was futuristic, and of course they fucked things up in the present. so there were baboon-a-saurouses (dinosaurs with baboon faces) and even sea monsters in chicago - cool! or maybe it would have been if they hadn’t been expecting you to suspend too much common sense. i mean these sci-fi time travel plots can take a lot of liberties because you can’t exactly dispute the ‘facts’, but come on, there should be some rules and you shouldn’t contradict yourself along the way. overall it just made me wonder, what the hell happened to edward burns career?! you should probably skip this one, unless, like me you occasionally enjoy bad cinema.

“when a killer calls” - this adaptation of the classic ‘when a stranger calls’ was highly disappointing. when the original came out i was a teenager and a very busy babysitter so it scared the bujeezus outta me. going into it, i was wondering how in this age of caller id and call blocking they were gonna pull it off, but they did so by having the killer call the bimbo babysitter’s cell phone as an ‘unknown caller.’ he was also pretty technilogically advanced for a psycho-killer cause he also sent text messages and pictures of his other victims to her cell phone. i suspect this was done to set up a sequel, “when a strange killer texts.” definitely skip this one!

“creep” - this was a british film and it seems b movies are better acted in europe, or maybe their accents just make them seem like better actors. so this chick falls asleep waiting for a subway to go see george clooney (seriously), and wakes up completely alone and locked in london’s subway system. and while it looks too clean & bright & cheery for anything bad to happen, it turns out sinister things are lurking below. and okay, i have to admit, “creep” was really creepy and just kinda gross, but not totally horrible and the chubby little jack russel survived which means i can’t totally trash it. so if you like low-budget horror flicks, you could see it.

now for the departures from total crap:

“Aeon Flux” - i have no idea why this movie got panned and didn’t do well. i thought charlize kicked ass and that was before i watched the special features and found out she did 95% of her own stunt work. i did know that she broke her neck, literally, while training. and if you are part of the Mtv generation who watched Aeon Flux regularly even tho you rarely had any idea what the hell was going on, you know it’s suposed to be kind of random and freaky. and actually the plot line made a certain amount of sense and was pretty good. and while she wasn’t naked, she looked good and the costumes were cool! i liked it! (thor, you would definitely like it, just not as much as tomb raider !)

“hustle & flow” - man, it is hard out there for a pimp! and that terrence howard is a hell of an actor! i thought it was really good and i hate rap music, and struggled with the accents for the first half hour or so. and i’ve now had that song stuck in my head for two days so i guess they deserved an oscar for it. so even if its not your cup of malt liquor, it’s very entertaining.

now lets keep our fingers crossed for the coming attractions at the drive in!