Sons of Anarchy

If the writers could write and the actors could act, this might actually be a good show. They can't, and it isn't. The young, pretty actors have two acting styles—coy and stupidly perplexed—and the old, homely ones are character actors with no character: there's the rape guy, the needs-an-oxygen-mask-to-breathe guy, the Scottish guy, etc. It's basically The Sopranos-lite with white bikers, and once in a while a Wonder Years voiceover trots out a bunch of lame, pretentious hippy clichés. On a positive note, Ron "Sex Baboon" Perlman makes me gay for ugly.

RATING: 48%

(Image from editorial.sidereel.com.)

Sherlock Holmes

Sherlock Holmes is kinda like The Rocketeer, insofar as they are both movies with impressive production value and lackluster stories. That's not to say that Sherlock Holmes isn't worth watching, so much as it's not worth getting excited about. Guy Ritchie's slow-it-down-then-speed-it-up camera tricks keep a few of the action sequences from being totally incomprehensible but, in the end, they add very little to the overall movie. Some critics have played up an apparent gay subtext between Robert Downey Jr.'s Holmes and Jude Law's Watson, but it is much ado about nothing. HARDLY A SPOILER ALERT: the movie goes to great lengths to set itself up for a sequel.

Rating: 60%

(Image from filmofilia.com)

A Month of Ill-Fated Consumer Products #10: Esperanto

One day some guy realized that Europeans seemed to be having a hard time understanding each other's jibber jabber, so he made up some other, different jibber jabber that they could supposedly understand easier. It never really caught on. Why Europeans have to talk all fancy instead of just saying it like we do here in America is beyond me, but I suspect it has something to do with decadent effeminacy and intellectual frou frou. By the way: William Shatner.

RATING: Fiku vin%

(Image from shopturtlepie.wordpress.com.)

A Month of Ill-Fated Consumer Products #2: Hula Hoop

When's the last time you saw someone with a hula hoop who wasn't an acrobat prostitute? We had to use these things in gym class sometimes and pretty much all they were good for was choking other kids. If I ever caught my son with a fucking hula hoop I'd send him to military school.

RATING: 17%

(Image from images.theage.com.au.)

Bruno

Sacha Baron Cohen follows up Borat with gay panic-palooza. I was both delighted and offended within the first five minutes, so I feel I got my money's worth. In usual fashion, Cohen pushes the envelope with ordinary people to see how far he can go before they walk away or threaten violence. Unfortunately, there are only a few scenes of him goading people into saying ridiculous things, my favorites being the scene in which Bruno consults actual "charity image experts" to help him pick a charity and the one in which Bruno talks to parents of baby models to see what they're willing to allow. Most of the scenes are geared around gay stereotypes taken to extremes. Bruno tries to get through boot camp. Bruno talks to gay conversion ministers. Bruno forces captive audience to see his penis. Bruno fellates a ghost. Bruno gets jackhammered in the dookie by various objects. Nice use of ironic music, nonetheless. I laughed and cringed my way through.

Rating: Predictable yet still quite funny% (60%)

Photo courtesy of www.thebrunomovie.com/