Reviews

When I was a kid, my family had premium cable. My hormone-saturated brain couldn't get enough of the late night programming in my adolescence. It was clearly evident that I liked to watch movies and shows with naked women. I've never lost that. However, as the march of time has mellowed me out, I need more than T&A to hold my attention. I need a quality product with good-looking people, great passion, and captivating plots. "Sin City Diaries" delivers all three, and so much more.

The first reason this show is so good is technical; it's in High-Definition. It's the second HD late-night program on the network, but it's is the best, IMO. I found "Erotic Traveler" too serious.

Everyone is good-looking. Everyone! "Sin City Diaries" employs the best looking actors and actresses available. What's more, sex scenes have heat. I credit the show's creators and directors in addition to the actors. They translated the energy and passion they have for the project into their work, and it's clearly visible on screen.

On the note of good-looking, Amber Smith plays Angelica. Wow! When I saw the original commercial for the show, I pinched myself. "That can't be right. It's too good to be true!" Oh, it's true, MrBark. When she didn't have any sex scenes in the first few episodes, I thought I recognized the con, the bait-and-switch. "She's not doing any of the scenes, herself. She's just the focal point, almost a narrator, if you will." Wrong MrBark, she has scenes. Oh boy, does she have scenes! She even has a lesbian scene in one episode. That surprised me even more. God love Amber Smith!

However, this show is not just about sex. It has plot. It has strong plots. Every episode stood on it's own. At it's worst, the episode's plot would not drop below "average" for a typical television show. At it's best, it's riveting television. Even better than the individual episodes having plot, there was a story arc! A season-long story arc that flamed the fires of love and romance with Angelica's assistants so well, it could melt the Arctic ice cap all on it's own. It was a highlight of the show's first season, perfectly paced.

Finally, the bumpers round out my praise. Shortly before and after the show, it's not uncommon to have a three minute bumper, a photo shoot, an interview, etc. My favorite was the reporter deciding whether or not to play the role of chef when the booked actor didn't make it. He decided to pass. This bumper was the first one I saw, and I would have to wait all season to see who they got for the role . . . a woman! They had to go lesbian for that scene because they didn't have a male actor, and the part was generic enough that the switch was relatively easy for being necessary. Such an insightful little bumper into the nature of film-making, I loved watching it and the episode it chronicled. The bumpers would make a great DVD special feature.

Which brings me to my conclusion, the need for a DVD release. Normally, I can leave watching a show like this and forget about it within five minutes. Not this show, it's too good. It deserves to be on DVD. I give my whole-hearted endorsement, and I don't give it lightly. This show is a work of art. Kudos! To use a baseball metaphor, not only was this show a home run, not only was it a grand slam, this show was a grand slam that ripped the baseball apart! The covering and threads fell into the outfield seats, and the core went into orbit. NASA is tracking it right now!

Can you tell I liked the show? I hope you can, because I don't have one negative comment about it. If you have Cinemax or plan to get it, check out "Sin City Diaries," hopefully with that special someone. Trust me, it will be the last television show you watch that night.

Many will say Weekend at Bernie's is a comedy, but is it really? This review will contain SPOILERS, so discontinue reading if you do not wish to know the story.

The tragic anti-hero is Bernie, a man who seemingly has it all. He has a great NYC apartment, a house at the beach, a boat, a high-priced sports car, women falling at his feet, and a great toupee. He is the symbol of 1980s material success. Any of us would love to be in his position, right?

Perhaps not, for all great tragedies possess a fall from grace. Bernie is successful because of his involvement in the NYC organized crime underground. This combined with his lack of self-control in regards to the Don's girlfriend results in his untimely end.

The tragedy is this: in death, no one notices. Bernie's supposed "friends" continue to use his boat, party at his house, drink his booze, and yet no one realizes he is dead. The woman who indirectly caused his death defiles and molests his corpse without noticing. This is an insult not only to his person, but his sexual prowess as well. It would seem Bernie lacked any real emotional attachments. Instead, he plunged himself into the seedy world of 1980s materialism. It was this world that would not only cause his death, but would also insult his humanity through the implication that his life was irrelevant.

Indeed, Bernie became in death what he could not attain in life, a hero. While dead, Bernie's corpse protects two losers from meeting their own untimely ends at the hands of both the New York mafia and Neptune's realm. In death, Bernie was able to give pleasure to all those around him through his possessions and, in the case of his girlfriend, his body. However philanthropy and necrophilia aside, all of these redeeming acts are meaningless because when those around him find out that he is really dead, some do not believe while others express shock. However the shock is not from losing a dear friend, but from the realization that they were too absorbed in their material lifestyle to take notice of the recently departed.

The tale of Bernie is a tragic one. A man unloved in life and death, let his story guide you. For it is not the material success that brings one happiness and love, rather it is the depth of friendship.

This film is not F.U.B.A.R. However, it did teach me what that term means. It's not often that a film this cheesy, this good can enter your heart. "Tango & Cash" isn't just a movie. It's an institution.

The common mistake many people make when they view this film is that they judge it in a conventional way. Bad move. Why? Because when you judge it in a conventional way, you get a seemingly bad film. For example, one-dimensional characters, cookie-cutter plot, one-liners every minute, etc.

However, this film rises above the conventions of film making. Sly and Kurt have a good chemistry, and that more than carries the film. However, this film has the added benefit of cheese.

Why are cheesy films looked down upon? Sure, in real life criminal masterminds can't lease/buy a former military base. Of course they never have a mechanized infantry. Surely even if they did, two men with a fully armed SUV wouldn't be able to conquer such a criminal empire.

I suppose I should have labeled that a spoiler, but is it? Is there any doubt how a movie like this is going to end? No, and that's the beauty of it.

If you like cheese, you will LOVE this film. If you don't like cheese, then you should probably watch your copy of "Titanic" for the 100th time.

I must say I rather enjoyed this film. For the sake of a common point of reference, I will outline the plot later in this review. This film is a good late-night cable film. It is explicit when compared to R-Rated films (MPAA Rating System) but not graphic when compared to hardcore pornography. It is a good balance, and perfect for couples who want to spice up their viewing habits, but don't want to feel "dirty" afterwards. In total, there are 10 sex scenes. Seven scenes are straight one-male-to-one-female scenes. One scene is a female-to-female scene. One scene is a one-male-to-two-females-with-one-female-watching scene. Then, there is one

two-males-to-two-females-where-the-two-males-have-nothing-to-do-with-each-ot her-but-the-two-females-do-have-something-to-do-with-each-other scene. Whew, I think I burned out the hyphen key! Now on to the plot summary. SPOILERS AHEAD!!!

Gabriella and Julia are two American tourists visiting Italy. Gabriella is very liberal and drives conservative Julia nuts. Things get worse when Gabriella's late night fling turns out to be a thief. With no money and no belongings Julia and Gabriella are stranded far from home. Their pride prevents them from calling home for help.

While walking the country roads of Italy, the pair come across an employee of a local castle. He takes them to the castle where the two cousins meet Isabel, the keeper of the castle. She tells a tale of the castle's origins. A prince built it for his true love. However, his family prevented the two from marrying, and fate took his life not long after. After hearing the report of her true love's demise, she dies of a broken heart. Ironically, she looks like Isabel. After her death, the castle went to the woman's sister and has been passed down to relatives through the years.

Upon finishing this tale, Isabel offers Gabriella and Julia jobs at the castle which now caters to a select group seeking romantic adventures. The two cousins accept.

During their tenure at the castle, Gabriella develops an interest in the employee that originally brought them there. This interest is peaked because he is very cool to her advances, something she has not before experienced. In the meantime, conservative Julia keeps running into the same guest over and over. Despite his bumbling approaches he charms her, but Julia is too insecure to go any farther.

The one day, Julia walks into one of the rooms. It was seemingly empty, but then a couple is in the bed making love. She sneaks out of the room but maintains a vigil. When Gabriella arrives on scene, the couple vanishes as mysteriously as they appeared.

The answer to this encounter is solved when Julia comes across a miniature castle with dolls, each of whom is representing a guest, in Isabel's room. When dolls are paired up with one another and placed in the miniature castle, the guests that are represented are magically transported to a realm where they experience a sexual encounter. However in reality, they don't go anywhere, but it sure doesn't seem like that to them.

Gabriella soon learns of this magic. She wants to really use it to give the guests a good time while Julia advocates restraint. Julia sees the magic as too powerful and chooses instead to study its origin. She discovers that the woman with whom the prince had fallen in love with was a Gypsy with magical powers. However, Gabriella is getting impatient because she really wants to play with the dolls.

Things really get heated when Isabel leaves the castle for business. "When the cat's away the mice will play," and Gabriella certainly plays with this power. However, her actions often have unintended results.

I don't want to ruin the ending. Let's just say Isabel is not who she seems to be and neither are Gabriella and Julia. Gabriella must deal with the consequences to her actions, and Julia must deal with her insecurities.

All in all, a great film. The audio on the DVD is a bit loud when compared to my other DVDs, but that it easily solved by turning the volume down. If you like this genre, buy this movie. You won't be disappointed.

I was disappointed with this film mainly because I was expecting a different movie. To credit the film, this was an "X-File"' like plot before there was an "X-Files" show. However, the movie was as cheesy as it could be without taking place in Wisconsin.

This movie just took itself way too seriously. There was a lot of violence and action but little nudity and no sex, despite the theme of impregnation. The nudity is brief, only in the few strip club scenes, which implies more nudity and sex to follow when the scene first pops up, no pun intended, but alas, it's a tease. This is where Lisa Jordan, played by Heidi Paine, works. She's not a stripper, so we never see her naked. Instead, she is a waitress who needs a paying job while she's working on her thesis. That's right, writing a thesis for graduate work in academia is what she's doing; it makes perfect sense, right? Heidi is hot though. After all, strip clubs don't hire ugly women as waitresses . . . or so I'm told. She spends the whole movie answering the question, "Who really needs a bra anyway?" I know I don't!

There was another character that "aroused" interest. She was this assistant to a New Age reverend who happened to be wearing a leather mini-skirt, but the writers drop the character! Where did she go? You don't drop hot characters when your movie sucks, at least not before they get naked.

The director went with a surreal vision that doesn't work; the beginning is all over the map, making little sense. The story also has many parallels with the original "Terminator," like our heroes hiding out, how the movie ends, etc. Apologies for the "spoiler" there, but believe me, you can't spoil this crappy movie. Perhaps this direction would have worked if the production values weren't so low, but I doubt it.

The special effects looked like animation from a personal computer, a 1989 personal computer. The background 1980s synthesizer music was overdone, and the dialog was horrible. There is a part where some guy named "Officer Davis" comes forward with testimony that is way too specific. It makes little sense because everyone else who has come forward has been killed, so why did he testify? The answer is "exposition" of course. With that said, maybe some mystical force was at work, and the character became self-aware that he was in this flop, so he suicide-by-cops himself into a dirt nap to escape the script? Now that would be an interesting story, relative to this film's story anyway.

The editing was also atrocious. There is a particular car chase that goes from an exterior shot of the cars in a field, to an interior shot of one of the drivers. When you look over her shoulder, you can see that she's in the city. The shot goes back to the exterior view, and they're back in the field! There was also a scene where a writer was typing on a typewriter. Would you like to guess whether or not the typing sounds matched his keystrokes? If you said that they didn't match, you win a gold star.

Of course the actors were overly melodramatic, but I must give Erik Estrada some credit. He gave it his all. Ponch pulls no punches, earning his paycheck.

The stunts were also laughable. For example, there was a hit-and-run involving a pedestrian: the car stops, the pedestrian hops on the hood, and the car speeds away. Also, empty cardboard boxes stop a moving car involved in a chase, spinning the car out. I laughed my ass off again when they showed a motorcycle wreck in slow motion. In my view, that motorcycle could not have been going faster than 5 mph. They must have skipped insuring this film or something.

However, I will give the filmmakers credit for their use of squibs in the gun shot scenes. There were two really cool gunshot wounds, one in some lady's forehead and one in some guy's back that blasted through his stomach. The forehead shot elicited a genuine Keanu "Whoa!" from me.

In summary, this film is cheesy. I like cheesy films, but this one went the wrong way. It went the serious, violent way. The film should have gone the comedic, sexy, or even pervy way. The film is supposed to be about alien impregnation, so have fun with that! Instead, the aliens are barely in the picture, and they impregnate the ladies by zapping something through their bellybutton. I don't know about you, but if I'm traveling thousands of light-years to impregnate hot Earth women, I'm going to do it the fun way.

This film wasn't going to win Academy Awards; the only genre that would have worked for this film was the B-rated soft-core erotica genre. I could only imagine what the genius Alain Siritzky could have done with this project.

I was five-years-old when this movie first came to HBO. I haven't seen it in a while, but I still have a good impression of it. If you like cheesy sci-fi films, you'll like this one.

<SPOILER ALERT> The premise of the movie is fantastic. A UFO crashes decades ago. What does the military do with it? They put it in a junkyard where high-schoolers have access to the strange craft's engine.

Now Michael tries to pass off the alien time-warp engine as his own science project. Now, I've studied to be a teacher, and there's no way on The Good Lord's earth that ANY teacher would believe this was a student's own project.

My favorite part was when they were trying to outrun the electric tendrils of the gizmo. Now let's see, electricity runs at THE SPEED OF LIGHT!!! According to Einstein, NOTHING but energy can go as fast as light. Yet, THEY OUTRUN THE TENDRILS! I don't care how good your car is, it can't run that fast! This is so cheesy, you have to love it.

I would have to say that Dennis Hopper, the teacher, and Fisher Stevens, the best-friend Vince, give Academy Award winning performances, if the Academy had a sense of humor. The best line belongs to Stevens. As Vince is having his mug shot taken, the cop asks him why he's wearing sunglasses at night (How '80s is that?). He replies, "When you're cool, the sun shines on you 24 hours a day." Great delivery.

If you like cheesy films, you must, MUST, see this one.