Viewer Discretion Advised: 09 June, 2007

We hear at SE&L have, for a while now, lamented the lack of decent mainstream motion picture comedy. While fans can point to the horrible hackwork of someone like Sacha Baron Cohen (can we all agree now that Borat is not groundbreaking, just occasionally funny?) or the overdone dopiness of Will Farrell (more like Clichés of Glory), the truth is that they just don’t make big screen laughfests like they used to. Case in point, this slacker shuck and jive posing as viable cinematic wit. Kate Hudson, Matt Dillon and Owen Wilson all should have known better. Indeed, spoofs about misfits and their inability to fit in only work where there is an audience able to either identify with, or root against, the problematic protagonist. In this case, Dupree is sort of a post-millennial poster boy, a man so in touch with his raging inner child that it’s like some new kind of metaphysical pedophilia. The film itself is equally uncomfortable. (09 June, HBO, 8PM EST)

It should have been so much better. A series of stereotypical characters climb aboard a big boat. Boat gets hit by rogue wave. Boat flips over. Things go boom. People try to survive. So why is Wolfgang Peterson’s CGI heavy take on Irwin Allen’s ‘70s disaster classic so crappy? Perhaps because we could care less who lives and who dies. That’s never a successful cinematic formula. (09 June, Cinemax, 10PM EST)

Mark Wahlberg stars in the supposedly uplifting story of Vince Papale, a 30 year old bartender who became part of Coach Dick Vermeil’s revamp of the late ‘70s Philadelphia Eagles. While the notion of fulfilling one’s lifelong athletic ambitions can and does make for riveting big screen storytelling, this overly sentimentalized (and sensationalized) version of the tale is more ra-ra than dra-ma. (09 June, Starz, 9PM EST)

Many moviegoers overlooked this excellent Gore Verbinski film (didn’t know he made films sans pirates, did ya?) for one very poor reason – the shortsighted suits at Paramount couldn’t figure out how to promote it. They tried the screwball comedy approach. They even went the way of sentimentalized schlock. But the truth is, this desperate dark satire sits somewhere in the middle of crazy and considered. It deserved better than to be marginalized by misguided marketing. (09 June, ShowCASE, 9PM EST)

As part of a big fat celebration of the many martial arts, the Independent Film Channel is offering up both halves of Quentin Tarantino’s amazing homage to all things Shaw Brothers. Combining the three elements he does best – dialogue, story strategy, and directorial showmanship, the bad boy of Indie auteurism delivered on his long simmering desire to bring wild world cinema to the Western mainstream. With the unbelievable Uma Thurman in the lead (Ms. T deserved an Oscar for her tremendous work here) and a veritable who’s who of US and Asian acting names (Michael Madsen, Sonny Chiba, Lucy Liu, Darryl Hannah), Tarantino combined action with arch emotional content to weave a complex narrative of revenge, honor and motherly love. Part two is often cited as the more subtle or the pair, but that’s just because the action is amped down in favor of a conversational confrontation between Thurman’s Bride and the title icon (played perfectly by David Carradine). Some can complain about this filmmaker’s decision to cannibalize an entire culture’s movies for his own artistic ends, but when the results are this spectacular, who cares. Besides, IFC has enough examples of the real chopsocky genre on view to override the sense of filmic colonialism. (09 & 10 June, IFC, 9PM EST)

It’s a terrible given within the business world, but everyone knows that corporations are wholly and significantly corrupt. What this amazing documentary does is argue that direct dishonesty has been part of the overall business plan for centuries. Perhaps its most memorable conceit? When profiled as a “person”, these nefarious multinational entities are labeled as antisocial psychotics in their actions. (11 June, Sundance, 10:30PM EST)

George Miller, who made his name giving Max his madness, and a group of CGI penguins their happy feet, is actually a real life physician. Perhaps that’s why this unique medical drama has such a heartfelt, personal perspective. Nick Nolte’s questionable Italian accent aside, this stunner delves deep into a mysterious illness, the child challenged by it, and the parents who never give up hope. The result is both gut wrenching and spirit soaring. (12 June, Sundance Channel, 6:45PM EST)

It’s the Cabbage Patch Elvis himself, Arch Hall, Jr., stirring up things in a repeat from last November’s TCM Underground entry. As the featured atrocity, the boy with a thorn in his side first stars as a quick tempered killer out for standard crime spree kicks. Talk about your suspension of disbelief. Arch is hard to buy as a homicidal maniac ala Charles Starkweather. But it’s the second feature that pushes the limits of legitimate believability even further. As part of an actual push by his film producer father to make Arch both a music and movie star (both on screen and off) our pie-faced putz suddenly shoots up the charts as an overnight pop sensation. Of course, he has a hard time living the rock star celebrity lifestyle. Yeesh. While we here at SE&L would normally scoff at such a regular rerun ideal, you can never have enough Hall in one’s retro retard film diet. (08 June, TCM Underground, 2AM EST)

Like the baffling Beast Within, this is another tale of a gal getting diddled by some manner of monstrous fiend and eventually giving birth to a murderous maniac freak baby. Naturally, a group of teens runs into the creature several years later, and few survive to tell the tale. While there are much better versions of this kind of ‘dirty little secret’ scare film, this one takes the human oddity cake. (12 June, Drive-In Classics, Canada, 7PM EST)

Friend of both Tarantino and Roth, Takashi Miike has come to symbolize the splatter facet of Japanese cinema with his bold and bloody motion pictures. For this slightly surreal effort, the director mixes comedy, craziness, and a vanishing corpse to tell an equally strange tale of Yakuza criminals at a moralistic crossroads. Some may see it as a lesser Miike, but it plays directly into the filmmaker’s foul domain. (13 June, Showtime Extreme, 2:05AM EST)

There are those who believe that it takes an outsider to accurately reflect America’s obsession with certain suspect ideas – be it sex, power or violence. But Wim Wenders (Wings of Desire) may not have been the best candidate to take on big screen brutality. This overdone tale of an action movie producer whose run in with real hostility provides a late in life change of heart is heavy-handed and hokey. While the intentions are good, the follow through it significantly flawed. (14 June, Indieplex, 10:50PM EST)