November 13th

Shrek the Third (Dreamworks)
I swear . . . Shrek looks like Patti LaBelle. Do an image search online and compare their pictures. It's uncanny!! I kept expecting Mike Myers to belt out a verse of "New Attitude". Seriously! Oh, and I almost forgot! Prince Charming looks dead-up like Diane Sawyer! Not kidding!! But, I digress. But, I digress because I was so bored I felt like I was watching The View. Gone is the cleverly-disguised adult humor that laced Shrek and Shrek 2. Gone are the charm and humor of Puss in Boots and Donkey, who, this time out, are reduced to seemingly unnecessary extras. The ONLY highlight here is the portrayal of Snow White, Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty and Rapunzel as moody, self-absorbed shrews. Like I said before, for that, I could just watch The View. This, like chocolate Lucky Charms, is a total disappointment. GRADE: C

November 20th

Hairspray (New Line Cinema)
Many people will see Hairspray thinking it merely the big-screen version of the hit Broadway musical. However, film buffs know that the Tony-award winning musical was actually based on 1988's John Waters' cult film classic Hairspray, the movie that launched the career of Ricki Lake. I enjoyed the satire in Waters' original, but nothing prepared me for the rip-roaring time I had in this movie musical update. In the first frames of the film, newcomer Niki Blonsky, who was working at a Cold Stone Creamery when she landed this role, springs out of bed and thrusts her plus-sized pipes and hips into "Good Morning, Baltimore!" I smiled and tapped my toes all the way through that opening number and for the next two hours straight. Blonsky gets tremendous support from John Travolta, Michelle Pfeiffer, Zac Efron, Amanda Bynes, Queen Latifah, Elijah Kelly and Taylor Parks. This may be my favorite movie musical of all-time. Those of you who don't know me may not understand the magnitude of that statement, so let me explain. That's like Paula Deen saying, "That's my favorite muffin." Or Rosie O'Donnell saying, "That's my favorite Louisville Slugger to use when I want to break my own arms!" GRADE: A-

November 20th

Live Free or Die Hard (20th Century Fox)
It's been twelve years since fictional action movie hero John McClane tried to Die Hard With A Vengeance. But Bruce Willis is back in the role that, in 1988, made him a viable Hollywood star. This time out, young computer hackers around the nation are turning up dead and McClane finds himself in the protective custody of one of those targets. He's Matt Farrell (Jeepers Creepers' Justin Long), who believes the once mythical "firesale" is now a reality and someone is launching a cyber-attack on the U-S to shut it down technologically. That someone is Thomas Gabriel (Hitman's Timothy Olyphant), a former government operative who has grown disenchanted with Lady Liberty. Come on, Thomas! How bad can this country be? I mean, we have 30-minute infomercials about Dual Action Cleanse! Oh well, I guess everyone has to have an agenda! Well, here's mine. The Die Hard series may be the most consistently entertaining movie franchise there is. In fact, I can't think of another series of films that is 4 for 4. The storyline is timely, and the special effects are amazing. And it's nice to see some real explosions and some real car crashes that weren't created by a computer. GRADE: B

November 27th

I Know Who Killed Me (Sony Pictures)
Well, if I was Lindsay Lohan and I made this movie, I would drink incessantly and develop a coke habit too. Here, Hollywood's bad girl stars as talented pianist and creative writer Aubrey, who is kidnapped, tortured and left for dead by a serial killer. Only Aubrey doesn't die. She lives and, because of the trauma, tries to convince her friends and family that she isn't Aubrey at all. She claims to be Aubrey's twin sister Dakota Moss, who just happens to be a stripper. Turns out, Dakota really is Aubrey's stigmatic twin. When the killer cut off Aubrey's finger, Dakota's finger fell off too! At the strip club, no less! Guess that made holding onto that pole difficult! Later, the killer cuts off Aubrey's leg. Then, Dakota's leg falls off and she has to get a fake one. I sat in the theatre wishing that I had a stigmatic twin of my own who was face-down in a guillotine. GRADE: F

November 27th

Waitress (Fox Searchlight)
Drama surrounded the release of Waitress because the film's writer/director Adrienne Shelly was brutally murdered in Manhattan last November. If you don't know who Adrienne Shelly is, you'll see her on screen as well alongside Keri Russell as a fellow waitress in Joe's Pie Diner. Russell plays Jenna, whose life is a great big slice of rural apple pie and she's tired of it. Her husband Earl (Jeremy Sisto) is a low-life and she's going to have his baby despite the fact that she knows he got her drunk to conceive it. Earl doesn't support Jenna at all and scoffs at the fact that she thinks she can win the $25,000 grand prize in the Jonesville pie bake-off. For the most part, Waitress was a critical success when it was released. Critics bit right into this, chewed it up and savored its provincial flavors. But not me. I bit into it, then spit it out because I thought it tasted like Southern-fried poo on a stick! The characters here are so cornpone they don't seem real. These are caricatures of Southern folk rather than real characters, which is a shame. GRADE: