Movie Review: This Film Is Not Yet Rated

This Film Is Not Yet Rated is a documentary about the shady, underside of the film industry, the MPAA, and it's secretive rating system.  Director Kirby Dick exposes the biases in the rating system between sex and violence in film, homosexual versus heterosexual sex scenes, and the lack of any kind of published guidelines as to why one movie may get a PG-13 for instance while another very similar movie will get an R, or NC-17.

From there he segways into the secretive world of the raters themselves, interviewing some former raters, exposing current raters, and how they differ from the 'normal parents of 5-17 year old kids' that the MPAA claims they are, and finally exposes the  appeals process.  Dick manages to make the documentary light and fun with lots of interviews from film-makers like John Waters, Kevin Smith and Matt Stone.  I definitely enjoyed this doc.

Sky Captain is Fluff, But Very Pretty Fluff

Take a very pretty cast, the plot of a 30 minute cartoon adventure, lots of crazy action with no clear connection, stylistically fantastic designs, a far too limited color palette, and too much Vaseline on the camera lens.  And what do you get, a fantastic action adventure short.  Now stretch it out to nearly two hours, and you'd get Sky Captain and the World of Tomorrow.

Jude Law, Gwyneth Paltrow, Angelina Jolie, and Bai Ling were all very pretty, and with the exception of Bai Ling who I haven't seen in a movie before, I know they are competent actors.  Their acting abilities are wasted on this film however as no character is thicker than soggy single ply toilet tissue.  I would have happily given up just a bit of the action sequences to learn why Dr. Totenkopf was driven to destroy the world, or what the deal between Joe, Polly, and Franky was. 

Instead, as the credits rolled, I felt like I'd seen the longest trailer to what could be a really great movie, especially if the camera man would take the time to clean some of the grease off the lens before shooting.

Star Trek Rocks

I just watched Star Trek.  Wow! what a great movie, it beats the first Star Trek movie by a mile despite having to recast everybody, and, by the way, the new actors filled their rolls superbly, I thought.  This was quite possibly a better film than Wrath of Khan, it's that fscking good.  I started watching with a trepidation, spawned by watching the Star-Wars franchise swirl down the quality crapper.  So I might just be relieved that this new Star Trek movie didn't piss all over a beloved universe, but no, I don't think so, I think they hit a home run with this picture-show. 

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