This week's movies, in decreasing order of enjoyment...

-=- Jet Li's Fearless -=-

I'm a big fan of stereotypes, they're such handy time savers. Without them, I'd have to get to know people individually before judging them. That's just way too much work. So I rely on Hollywood to portray and reinforce those stereotypes, and when it comes to China, it's been doing a fabulous job, until now.

The movie starts out fine. A Chinese man (martial arts expert, obviously) enters a tournament against 4 opponents. You might think that 4 against 1 is a little unfair, but the first 3 are "westerners", so he takes care of them in a couple of minutes. The fourth opponent is Japanese, that makes him a worthy adversary.

But before we get to that last fight, we'll have a flashback to review our hero's life. This is where the stereotypes start to break down. We expect to see a life of struggles against numerous obstacles, but always emphasizing our hero's noble and virtuous side. But no, we get to learn what an immense prick he is (or rather was).

It was almost at the end of the movie that I finally realized that I was actually paying attention to (and enjoying) the story of this movie, of this Kung Fu movie. Kudos.

But Hollywood, let's not make a habit of this, ok? I'm not sure I can take "The Transformers" with a thought-provoking plot or "Rocky Balboa" with intelligible dialogue. You see, you also have a stereotype, you're supposed to produce simple entertainment that systematically lowers our IQ. Because otherwise, one day we'll figure out that a small Coke really isn't worth $4.

-=- Flyboys -=-

Other than Jean Reno, very few of the actors playing Frenchies in this movie have names that sound even remotely French. I mean... Jennifer Decker!? Did Hollywood start outsourcing French roles?

This movie is set in a time period when Americans finished wars instead of starting them. Part of me was hoping to hear at least one character refer to it as "World War One".

Do you know why aviators of that time wore silk scarves? See the movie to find out.

An American pilot meets a young French woman... in France... he flirts with her, while she struggles to survive and feed three orphaned children in a bombed out farm house... he lives in a French Chateau with catered French food... he has plenty of free time between missions and access to a Library... still... guess which one of them had to learn the other's language? Oh well... When in Rome, do as the Americans do, I suppose.

Toward the end, they get separated and he promises to meet her in Paris. He doesn't say where in Paris, he doesn't say when, he doesn't even ask her last name!!! Girl, consider yourself dumped.

-=- Haven -=-

Ladies be warned, they made Orlando Bloom look ugly. There. I have single-handedly destroyed the box-office returns for this movie. Oh well. Too bad, it had some good parts. I got to learn the abridged history (the best kind) of the Caymen Islands. You'll just have to see the movie to learn for yourselves (or load up Wikipedia, I guess).

But I have a problem with the title. Everyone gets drunk or high, gangsters rob a not-so-innocent tourist, the food is probably spicy, cops beat you up in a landromat simply because they feel your life is lacking direction... I don't know about you, but that doesn't sound like Heaven to me.

What?

-=- All the King's Men -=-

A bible-thumping slack-jawed yokel gets elected governor of Louisiana, then gets shot. Stuff happened in between, probably, I seem to recall several speeches with lots of arm waving, but I had a hard time deciphering the accent, so lots of it just flew over my head.

I cannot believe those people use to speak French... After having massacred the language of Molière they apparently decided to do the same to Shakespeare's.

Wait for the DVD, I'm sure it'll have subtitles.

Kham loves elephants. A little too much, if you ask me.

Kham is a Jaturungkabart, which, I believe, means "he who dislocates shoulders". His job is to protect his elephants. He's got three of them: a male, a female and a baby (very Disney-esque). But he's apparently not very good at it since not 5 minutes into the movie, the female one gets shot by hunters, leaving him with only Bambi and Pai Gow.

Kham is very upset by this, and he's got the training montage to show it. Because once he becomes a skilled martial art fighter, he'll be able to stop those bullets, I guess. Unfortunately, it didn't help much, his two remaining elephants, Kung Pow and Dumbo, are stolen and taken to Australia. Who the hell steals an elephant!?! A large multinational corporation, obviously. Having a large elephant skeleton in your board room is apparently a big advantage in the business world. And while you're at it, you might as well use the meat to supply your exotic food restaurant. Wow! How many burgers can you make out of a 10-ton elephant?

Now Kham is really mad. He follows the thieves to Australia and bumps (literally) into Jackie Chan, but he doesn't stick around (you know your movie plot is weak when even Jackie Chan won't give it more than 5 seconds of his time).

Kham finds the thieves and starts breaking celery! Well, he doesn't actually break any celery, the foley artist breaks the celery. It's so happens that breaking celery is what sounds the most like crushing bones. I've heard they tried breaking actual bones once, but people didn't think it sounded realistic enough, so celery it is. And the celery budget for this movie must have been impressive.

Kham has mostly two ways of hurting you. He can run up and crash into you (something he learned from elephants, no doubt) or he can grab your arm / leg / whatever and twist it until it goes crunch (hence the celery). He rarely kills anyone, but there sure are a lot of henchmen lying on the floor clutching at some joint after he leaves a room. He at least succeeds in saving his baby elephant before it gets eaten, and somehow manages to get a girl in the process. Good job, Kham.

A detective goes around trying to figure out who killed Superman. Yet, at no point does he ever suspect Lex Luthor. Some detective.

Leelee Sobieski's acting has often been accused of being a bit "wooden", but still, she doesn't deserve to get kicked in the face!!! Her beautiful face! Shame on you Nicolas Cage!

Other than it's tendency to kick and punch women in the face, this movie has more differences with the original. Paganism was replaced by Witchcraft (possibly to provide more women to kick in the face). Our hero is not the idealistic pure virgin of days gone by. That's probably a good decision, we all know that people today are not as innocent and pure as they were back in 1973 (hmmm...). There's also no singing or suggestive nude dancing, sorry.

The girl he's looking for turns out to be his daughter he didn't know he had. When he finds out what she did to him, oh boy, she's gonna be soooo grounded!

Uneven.

There are great things in this movie, but there are also horrible things. For example, they use Googe Earth as a way to transition scenes from one part of the city to another, but then they use "Acky Breaky Heart" on the soundtrack. The characters are sometimes funny and engaging and at other times they seem to compete for the World's funniest accent.

I like bad movies just as much as the next guy, probably a lot more than the next guy, actually. But I didn't like this one, it just didn't work for me.