2008 / 87 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale Nauertz

One of the reasons I began writing movie reviews in the first place was so that I could warn others whenever I had the misfortune to watch something particularly awful, much like Ralph Nader used to warn people about unsafe automobiles (like the Chevy Corvair). Like Ralph I was hoping to use my cinematic watchdog skills to eventually, and ineffectually, campaign for president. Unfortunately, it seems that I have failed you, dear viewers. I don’t deserve to run even as a third party longshot for president. If I can’t warn you about the dangers of watching Mike Myers’ “The Love Guru”, how can I be expected to serve you in any other way?

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2008 / 99 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

Before he co-starred in the movie “Anchorman”, I thought of Paul Rudd as just another generic Hollywood pretty boy predetermined to be the Next Big Thing. This was based on his fine, but forgettable, performances in movies like “The Cider House Rules” and “Romeo + Juliet” (=Death). But since then, Paul Rudd has grown into one of the most consistently hilarious men in modern cinematic comedy. He’s got a sarcastic, low key bordering on deadpan way of delivering a line and wringing the maximum hilarity out of it. Not only that, but he’s got dashing, leading man good looks and charisma to spare. He’s generally one of the best things about any movie he’s in, so I’ve been scratching my head for the past couple of years wondering why this guy hasn’t starred in his own movie, why this guy isn’t on the fast track to become the next Tom Hanks? Thankfully, I need wonder no more because Paul is finally front and center in “Role Models”, a delightfully raunchy (and decidedly R-rated) film that takes the standard, inspirational adult-mentoring-kids-and-learning-something-themselves movie and administers a swift kick to its nuts.

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by Dale J. Nauertz

When it’s all said and done, I think 2008 will stand as a great year for film. The summer was pretty damned great..aside from a couple of stale farts that were stinking up the cineplex (most notably “The Love Guru”, seriously one of the worst films I’ve ever had the misfortune to see). And while the slate of fall films doesn’t have a lot that I’m panting over, it does have some films that look quite promising…and a lot of upcoming movies that have me scratching my head and wondering “WTF?” which, frankly, I love. I love it when, instead of a bunch of Oscar bait horseshit about blind, mentally disabled swim teams played by actors desperate for an Oscar, we get a bunch of movies that just…don’t…quite…compute. You’ll see what I mean. What follows are ten movies that I’m fairly excited to see.

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2008 / 107 Minutes / R
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

I tend to like movies about making movies but I think, in general, that people who aren’t really, really into movies tend to find such movies very, very boring. (I tried to make my own wife watch “Ed Wood”, for example, and she thought it was utterly pointless. She demanded I turn it off about halfway through. I must really love this woman, seeing as how I didn’t automatically file for divorce.) Therefore, I think it’s very clever that Ben Stiller took a movie about making a movie (inherently box office poison) and filled it with big stars, delightfully vulgar humor and plenty of things blowing up real pretty. Even if you find movies about making movies as boring as I find most “inspirational” sports movies (ugh!) you’ll probably laugh your ass off during the majority of “Tropic Thunder”.

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2008 / 150 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

For the past few years, every summer gives me the opportunity to bitch about how shitty its crop of blockbusters has been…until now. Aside from “Indy 4″ (which wasn’t very good) this has been one of the best summer movie seasons in recent memory. “Wall E” was clever, inspired and heartwarming with a dash of pointed social satire and a unique style (miles above the standard kids movie dreck but par for the course coming from Pixar). “Iron Man” was the most fun a person can have at the movies, with great performances, wonderful character development, and nifty action sequences. Heck, “Get Smart” was downright ingenious considering it was an adaptation of a musty, old TV show. But even so, Christopher Nolan’s “The Dark Knight” stands head and shoulders above this distinguished company. It is one of the meatiest, most thought-provoking, most flat-out stunning films that any summer has unleashed. In fact, after two viewings, I am tempted to proclaim it the best comic book movie ever made. It is so good, in fact, that calling it a mere “comic book movie” hardly does it justice.

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Go to www.drhorrible.com and see what NPH (Neil Patrick Harris A.K.A. Barney from “How I Met Your Mother” A.K.A. Doogie Howser S.S.) would do. It’s a three part streaming musical about a supervillain struggling to get into the League of Evil and win the heart of a woman he met at the laundromat. It’s wonderfully entertaining, told in three parts that are each about fifteen minutes long and, best of all, it’s FREE! Go, see, enjoy! And do it soon because the whole crazy experiment is only available free until midnight Sunday July 20th.

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2008 / 110 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

Guillermo Del Toro is a likable enough guy. But, as a director, he seems to return to the same well over and over again. Allow me to elaborate.

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Well fortunately (for me anyway) I did not get hit by a bus, but I still managed to be almost a week late getting this posted. Lame I know.

Lucky for you, this podcast is a double-decker special edition of rambling zaniness as it managed to balloon into a nearly 2 hour long podcast. So I guess the old saying “beware what you wish for” has been proven to be quite accurate in this case, since you get to put up with us for even longer this time.

The first half of the podcast deals with us discussing the celebrity deaths from the first half of the year, as we reminisce about the likes of Charlton Heston and George Carlin. Then we improbably manage to wander into a discussion of Julia Roberts movies on our way to dissecting the latest “best of” lists from the AFI and Entertainment Weekly. Needless to say there is a lot of rambling mingled throughout, but if you’ve listened to us for this long then you should expect nothing less.

The second half is where it gets interesting as for some reason we wandered off into political land. If you have no interest in hearing our opinions on abortion, gay marriage, smoking bans, patriotism and all manner of other supposedly taboo subjects then listen no further than about the 55 minute mark. If you want to hear a couple of guys from Wisconsin espouse their views on some of the more heated subjects in the news these days then continue on.

Hopefully, when all is said and done, we will still have some listeners left. As always… Enjoy the show!

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3).
[RSS] Add the A Fistful of Reviews Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically (MP3).
[MP3] Download the show in MP3 format.

Tell us how full of crap we are in the comments below!

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Well friends… It has been an eternity, but we are back with not one but two podcasts this week.

This is the first of them and it is quite dated as it was actually recorded on the day the Oscars took place this year (late February I believe). We discuss the pros and cons of the original Star Wars trilogy vs. the prequels trilogy. To top it all off we go through the Oscar nominees and make our picks, so now you will have the benefit of being able to see just how far off our rockers we really are.

We hope you enjoy this one despite the fact that it is about 4 months overdue and that there were some technical difficulties in the last 5 minutes that make Dale’s audio less than ideal.

[iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (MP3).
[RSS] Add the A Fistful of Reviews Podcast feed to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically (MP3).
[MP3] Download the show in MP3 format.

Feel free to have a belated Oscar discussion below. The other podcast will go up tomorrow unless I get hit by a bus…

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2008 / 136 Minutes / PG-13
Reviewed by Dale J. Nauertz

There are some movies that don’t truly suck, but they fall so short of how good they could have been that you say they suck anyway, even though they’re really just kinda mediocre. The fourth entry in the “Indiana Jones” franchise is just such a movie. It’s not exactly horrible, and it has some entertaining moments here and there, but it sucks because it should have been so much better.

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