Well, if Rhinna is trying to outdo Cassie with the who has the best topless photos and best nipple ring, I think she won. I don’t know why these women keep taking naked pictures of themselves. Don’t they know nothing in Hollywood is sacred. 

I wish I could read who the pictures were to. Can anyone figure it out? The message says “I love you____ I miss you.”

To see more of Rihanna’s naked photos CLICK HERE.

If you haven’t been to the video store in the last couple weeks you have some serious catching up to do. Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro are together again and this time actually have some screen time together, Nicholas Cage is up to his old international assassin tricks, Seth Rogen and James Franco smoke it up good, Vin Diesel is a futuristic mercenary, and the guys that brought you such gems as Epic Movie, Meet the Spartans, and the Scary Movies return with another hour and a half of disappointment. And those are only last week’s DVDs. Bring on the microwave popcorn!

Pineapple Express (2008), R, 117 mins.

I saw a ten-year-old kid almost choke on an ice cube in the theater watching this movie because he was laughing so hard. I don’t know what exactly a ten-year-old was doing watching this thing anyway, but it’s definitely one of the funniest stoner movies I’ve ever seen.

The ’stoner movie’ is a pretty thin sub-genre, but when a good one comes along it’s always good for a few laughs, and Pineapple Express is certainly no exception.

Seth Rogen and James Franco each fit perfectly into the very different roles that they play, one a regular guy with a regular but thankless job, and the other a diligent weed dealer who provides the necessary, ah, escape. Both are equally aimless and unambitious until they become involved in an intricate web of danger involving the gangland underworld and corrupt cops.

Most importantly, they constantly find themselves in the most bizarre and outlandish situations imaginable. Keep the tissues handy because you’ll laugh yourself to tears!

Righteous Kill (2008), R, 101 mins.

It would be putting things pretty lightly to say that the highly anticipated reunion of Robert DeNiro and Al Pacino was a little disappointing. The last time they appeared in a film together was in Heat in 1995, where they had almost no screen time together. Now, they have nothing but screen time together, but unfortunately that’s about all the movie has, too. For all the hype, there was not only nothing new about Righteous Kill, it was a routine, even boring by-the-numbers action thriller.

DeNiro and Pacino play two veteran NYPD detectives who have been friends and partners for about as long as either of them can remember. Their latest case is lifted right out of The Boondock Saints – a vigilante killer who is systematically killing off violent criminals who have fallen through the cracks of the judicial system.

Complicating matters are two other pesky detectives who have good reasons to believe that the two good guys might not be so good after all. It’s not a bad movie, but definitely a clear case of the whole being distantly less than the sum of its parts.

Babylon A.D. (2008), PG-13, 90 mins (Director’s Cut – 161 mins!!)

Ok, so I might like to take the time to suggest that you take the time to notice the discrepancy between the official running time of Babylon A.D. and the running time of the Director’s Cut. Evidently the studio cut out a whopping 71 minutes of Director Matthieu Kassovitz’s epic vision, which might be part of the reason that he publicly disowned the movie before it was released.

After having seen it, it’s not hard to see why. I don’t know that it’s bad enough for a professional filmmaker to make such a critical and decisive move as publicly abandoning the movie, but it was definitely a pretty good letdown.

In my review I mentioned that it might be worthwhile to wait and see if the entire original film would be released on DVD, but unfortunately I’m in China and all I have access to is massive quantities of dirt-cheap illegal DVDs, although I don’t know that I would have the interest to sit through three hours of Babylon anyway. But if I do you’ll be the first to know!

Bangkok Dangerous (2008), R, 99 mins.

I love Nicholas Cage, but before you take that as a recommendation to watch his latest action cheesefest, I should also mention that I love Steven Seagal, Jean Claude Van-Damme, and really, really bad horror movies. Cage is once again squeezed into a role that doesn’t remotely fit him – a high-level assassin (cleverly named Joe) with the greatest job. He gets to travel, the money is good, and he gets to ride around on cool BMW motorcycles. The only drawback seems to be that he is occastionally put into situations where he has to approach strangers in foreign countries while they’re in the middle of eating dinner and ask them to help him kill people.

here are a lot of roles that Nicholas Cage can do really well. He was perfect in The Rock, he inhabited his roles in Adaptation and Matchstick Men, and he even played a good investigator highly disturbed at his subject in 8mm, but here we’re expected to identify with this guy who is having conflictions about being given an assignment to kill a politician who happens to be a good man. It creates a confusing feeling when we’re expected to aspire to the moral high-ground of a contract killer.

Cage has done a lot worse, but he’s also done a lot better…

Disaster Movie (2008), PG-13, 88 mins.

Ok, so if there is one movie that you should avoid watching for the rest of your life, this is probably it. It is a stupendously idiotic “comedy” without a thought in its head. It’s a sad, genuinely despressing representation of how deeply the spoof film has sunk since the times of the great comedies of Mel Brooks and Leslie Neilsen.

Not that we should be surprised. Film school dropouts Aaron Seltzer and Jason Friedberg have been dropping these bombs in theaters for more than a decade.

I pride myself on my movie knowledge, but I am at a loss to explain how they’re still making a profit on these things. Will we ever catch on and stop paying to see them?

.

Mirrors (2008), R, 110 mins.

Alexadre Aja, the man behind the intensely creepy 2003 film High Tension and the intensely crappy 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes has now brought us something in between. Kiefer Sutherland adds credibility to the otherwise unoriginal horror film Mirrors, about an exiled New York City cop who soon finds himself battling a mysterious force hidden behind every reflective surface that is endangering his sanity, his life, and the lives of his family.

I understand people who feel that there is something inherently wrong with paying real money to watch Jack Bauer scream at his reflection for two hours, but as a creepy horror film it’s hard to say that Mirrors isn’t a success, It’s full of clever homages to old horror films, and the last five minutes are worth any other disappointments in the rest of the movie.

The Family That Preys (2008), PG-13, 111 mins.

Ok, so I’m going to just go ahead and admit that I never managed to bring myself to watch this movie and I’ve felt a little guilty about that ever since, but it’s not until now that I feel a little sense of vindication about that. It was a popular disaster, with a whopping 2.8/10 user rating on the IMDb.

For those of you who are still interested, here’s what it’s about -

While paternity secrets, marital infidelity, greed and unsavory business dealings threaten to derail both families, Charlotte and Alice decide to take a breather from it all by making a cross-country road trip in which they rediscover themselves and possibly find a way to save their families from ruin in “Tyler Perry’s The Family That Preys.”

Sounds fascinating!

Appaloosa (2008), R, 115 mins.

So the tagline for Appaloosa is “Feelings get you killed.” If there has ever been a statement made that appies to all westerns, that’s probably it. I have never been much of a western fan, and except for the occasional Eastwood fix or Back to the Future III I have generally avoided them until the highly impressive 3:10 to Yuma really changed my mind on the whole genre.

Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson star as two lawmen assigned to defend an lawless town in the 1880s from a brutal rancher named Randall Bragg (Jeremy Irons). Soon their friendship and ability to protect the town are both challeged by the arrival of a young widow plays by Renee Zelwegger.

Ed Harris turns in a brilliant performance both in front of and behind the camera, and you can always count on Viggo Mortenson and Jeremy Irons to do something cool. See this one.

My Best Friend’s Girl (2008), R, 101 mins.

Jumping on the bandwagon with Matthieu Kassovitz about badmouthing your own movies, Dane Cook famously berated the poster for this movie as its release date approached. Personally, I don’t see anything wrong with the poster, at least it’s honest because it doesn’t look anything different from any one of countless dozens of goofy romantic comedies that have come along over the years, and MY Best Friend’s Girl is certainly nothing new.

Dane Cook plays Tank, the best friend of Dustin (Jason Biggs), who is faced with the unenviable task of taking a girl on a date that is so catastrophically bad that she will decide that she should go back to Dustin after all. Needless to say, things don’t go quite as planned.

Let’s just hope she doesn’t figure out that her boyfriend was the star of Loser or all is lost!

Swing Vote (2008), PG-13, 120 mins.

Before you express your amazement that Kevin Costner is still coming out with almost unnoticed movies, you should also realize that Swing Vote also stars not only Dennis Hopper, George Lopez, Kelsey Grammer, and Stanley Tucci, but the great Judge Reinhold! That should be reason enough in itself to see it!

It’s not exactly a stretch of the imagination to come to the conclusion that the movie is a response to the tense political climate of our time. We have seen two of the most controversial presidential elections in American history twice in a row, so if anything it’s amazing that it has taken this long for someone to come out with a movie where all the madness comes down to just one guy’s decision.

It’s an entertaining exploration of the complexities and inadequacies of our electoral process, as well as a fantasy film in which the fate of the higest office in America could come down to the whim of a lovable, beer-slinging loser. Here’s hoping!

Brideshead Revisited (2008), PG-13, 133 mins.

Ok, so I guess I may as well warn you that Brideshead Revisited is based on a British novel from 1945 and is nearly two and a half hours long. Sounds a bit like homework to me.

It is, however, a well-made and intelligent World War II drama about the loss of innocence and a unique look at the life of aristocratic British life in the 1940s. It’s interesting and meaningful but hardly a thrill ride. I recommend it if you happen to be in the mood for a little historical love story and maybe even a little cognitive activity in your weekend moviegoing. Enjoy!

Alexadre Aja, the man behind the intensely creepy 2003 film High Tension and the intensely crappy 2006 remake of The Hills Have Eyes has now brought us something in between. Kiefer Sutherland adds credibility to the otherwise unoriginal horror film Mirrors, about an exiled New York City cop who soon finds himself battling a mysterious force hidden behind every reflective surface that is endangering his sanity, his life, and the lives of his family.

The movie opens with a terrified night watchman running for his life. From what, we don’t know, until he begs forgiveness from a mirror for trying to escape. The mirror cracks angrily in response.

There is a strange force in Mirrors that is able to torment members of the living, or members of the three dimensional, or members of whatever land the mirror-forces are unable to occupy. It is at least an hour and a half into the movie before we learn much of anything about the deadly force that is tormenting Ben Carson (Kiefer Sutherland), and that’s more than a little too long.

Ben Carson has recently been put on mandatory leave from the New York police department after a tragic shooting, and his life is increasingly spiraling out of control. Not the least of his worries is the strange fact that the only job he is able to get is as a night watchman, a caretaker, if you will, of a department store that burned down five years earlier.

I’m a little confused about that whole setup, by the way. The building is standing but is nothing more than a skeleton of its former self, and is clearly beyond repair. What is a nightly caretaker meant to do? Upkeep is obviously unimportant. Are they worried about teenagers or homeless people wandering in? Isn’t that a job that, say, a good fence can do?

It’s definitely the worst job ever, but it’s a great setup for a horror movie. A guy under tremendous pressure is forced to take a job where he has to wander through an enormous, burned building every hour or so in the middle of the night. Personally I would walk off the job and quit as soon as the mirrors showed me on fire, but not Ben Carson. He didn’t start browsing the classifieds even when he learned that his predecessor suffered a mysterious death involving mirrors. This guy has balls of solid rock!

Complicating the matters of Ben’s unraveling professional life is the fact that his wife doesn’t want him coming over to see his kids without calling first, he’s an alcoholic, and his sister, who is providing him with a sofa to sleep on, is a bartender. This guy needed professional help before the mirrors started talking to him! But apparently he doesn’t know that, because even when he becomes the prime suspect in his sister’s grisly death, he doesn’t know better than to go around telling people that

Ben and his wife stare in shock at how obvious this metaphor is.

mirrors are talking to him. Not exactly the best time to go talking crazy, you know? Here’s a sample of his reassuring dialogue, “Amy, I’m not crazy, these mirrors are dangerous!” He then proceeds to take a mirror out in front of her house in broad daylight and shoot it.

The scenes inside the derelict department store are actually pretty effective, but it becomes clear very early on that far too much stock is put into the scares of his nightly walk-throughs and not nearly enough put into developing a real story. There’s a story, of course, it’s just that the movie feels like a lot of Funland Haunted House tours intermixed with an occasional break to explain a few things, and then back to the haunted house.

A good horror movie will either make you fear something that previously seemed harmless (like the dark or hallways or dolls or children or the like), or instill in you the fear or interest that there might be something more going on right under our very noses. Mirrors attempts to do both – to make us fear not only mirrors but all reflective surfaces, which are all dangerous in the movie, and also to suggest that there is a whole other world going on behind those mirrors, that those pesky handprints that won’t wipe off are really someone on the other side with their hand on the glass.

Ben ponders which side of the mirror he's on.

I doubt that the movie will succeed in making many people afraid of mirrors, although it did have a fair amount of good scares and a genuine feeling of tension when it was supposed to. Naysayers will balk at the idea of paying real money to watch Jack Bauer scream at his reflection for two hours, but even though this is basically a strange combination of several previous movies and there’s not much original going on, you could definitely do worse. It’s a major improvement on the horror movies that we’ve seen released in the last ten years or so. I had started to lose faith completely in the entire genre. Mirrors is not going to save the horror genre from being sacrificed to the box office gods, but I’m happy every time I see a scary movie these days that doesn’t star a lot of sorority girls in halter tops and idiot pretty boys.

The movie takes a bizarre turn in the third act when Ben goes in search of a mysterious someone named Esseker, about whom he knows nothing. The only thing he knows is that the mirrors will not let him or his wife and kids live unless he provides this Esseker. His investigation leads him to a super-creepy farmhouse in Pennsylvania where a nice old man is remarkably forthcoming to Ben about past family tragedy. He must have been impressed with Ben, who claimed to be a grad student writing a research paper about schizophrenia.

Amy Carson saves her kids from the forces of evil and looks hot at the same time.

Ben finds a way to win his family’s safety at the same time as we learn what is really going on behind those mirrors. Unfortunately, just as Ben discovers how to save his family, they are at home being tormented by all of the mirrors in the house. The climax of the film is effective enough except that Ben’s crazy hot wife is running around the house in a wet t-shirt barely able to contain her glistening cleavage, which is a little distracting from the action at hand. The good kind of distracting, I guess, but distracting nonetheless.

But for all of it’s weaknesses, as a creepy horror film it’s hard to say that Mirrors isn’t successful. It might even be a pretty good date movie, although there are dozens better that you could watch at home. But the ending, I don’t mind telling you, is better than everything else in the movie, and it’s almost worth going to see it just for the last five minutes. Horror fans, if nothing else, will enjoy picking out the homages…

Oh, and one more thing…

This CAN'T be a coincidence...