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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 18 September 2006

Tanzie and Ava Marchetta are rich teenage snobs.  Two years ago, they inherited their father’s wealthy cosmetics company after he passed away.  Continuing to live their life of luxury, these girls only look out for themselves and have no sense of reality.

As the spokespeople for Marchetta Cosmetics, Tanzie and Ava’s faces are plastered across billboards.  They attend Hollywood’s A-list get-togethers.  Their marketing team ensures their activities are covered on E! news.  Ava is about get engaged to a young heartthrob but the announcement is being delayed so that a big party can be thrown and the media can be informed.

Sadly, these poor unfortunate girls lack business savvy.  Their company has been struggling and so their appointed trustee, Tommy Katzenback (Spiner), suggests that they accept a take-over offer of $150m from rival Fabiella (Huston).  As the girls think over the offer, the company is stung by bad publicity.  A television journalist has reported that some of the cosmetics cause severe facial disfigurations.

This sends the share price falling and Fabiella is now only prepared to offer $60m for the company.  Boo hoo!  The girls will not stand for this and begin a mission to clear their tarnished image and get the company back to its full, profitable self.  It won’t be easy however because they accidentally burn down their house, give their car away and have their credit cards cut off (because the company can’t afford them???).

Given this film is purportedly based on the Hilton sisters, I’m surprised Tanzie and Ava didn’t release a sex video.  They could have easily clawed back their lost $90m and still kept their faces on every second page of every second tabloid magazine.  It would have made for a more interesting movie.  Instead, writers John Quaintance, Jessica O’Toole and Amy Rardin think that we’ll feel sorry for them.  Give me a break!!!  They deserve a bullet, not sympathy.

If, and that’s a big if, you can suspend your disbelief and go along with this farce of a storyline, you’ll be bored to tears by the plot developments.  Within 15 minutes, I knew exactly how the film would end and who would fall in love.  The remaining 82 minutes is jam-packed with filler material that belongs on the cutting room floor.  Outtakes are shown during the closing credits but they aren’t even close to being funny.

On the Internet Movie Database, a website I love to refer to, Material Girls has been ranked by the public as the 6^th worst movie of all time.  May it gather dust on video store shelves for many years to come!

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 September 2006

Apparently, Silent Hill is based on a computer game.  I haven’t heard of it.  I haven’t played it.  If this film is anything to go by, then I won’t be buying the game version anytime soon.  I’d only be confused and irritated.

I’m not really sure what this film is about.  This doesn’t mean it’s cool in a Mulholland Drive kind of way.  Rather, it had we wanting to walk out of the theatre.  It begins with a mother, Rose (Mitchell), and her daughter, Sharon, driving to a ghost town called Silent Hill.  Sharon has been having bizarre hallucinations about this place and Rose thinks that visiting it for real might help cure her.

When they get there however, things start getting spooky.  The town is covered with smoke and there are strange ghostly creatures that attack them.  When they try to leave, they find the roads have been cut-off.  They are trapped and must fight for their lives.  Trying to help locate them is Rose’s husband, Christopher (Bean), but he too is up against some supernatural elements.

Well, that’s my interpretation of events.  If I’ve gotten it wrong, then they should have done a better job helping me understand.  I’m surprised to know that it was written by Roger Avary, a filmmaker I admire for his screenplays of Pulp Fiction and The Rules Of Attraction.  This is not one of his better efforts.

Australian Rhada Mitchell stars in a role that only requires her to look frightened and scream out her daughter’s name repeatedly.  At the preview screening I attended, the audience’s reaction said it all.  They laughed when they weren’t supposed to (mostly at the cheesy dialogue) and looked as equally confused as I was.  Few would have had positive words to say afterwards.

There are a few different theories about the ending on internet forums but after two hours of this nonsense, I couldn’t be bothered reading them.  Please don’t make a sequel.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 14 September 2006

When you look at the people behind Nacho Libre, you should get a fair idea as to what to expect.  It has been written and directed by Jared Hess, the creator of the cult hit Napoleon Dynamite.  It stars Jack Black, the man we remember from School Of Rock and Shallow Hal.  It all adds up to an off-beat comedy that will be loved by some and loathed by others.

Nacho Libre gets its humour by creating a bizarre leading character and putting him in ridiculous scenario.  Ignacio (Black) is a friar who works at a monastery in Mexico.  He is looked down upon by the other monks and has been given the unwanted job of chef.  When you see the depressing dishes that Ignacio serves up, it’s a wonder that he’s kept the position for so long.

Ignacio has a secret however.  He has a love for wrestling.  He covertly watches the fights on television and fantasises that he might be a wrestler some day.  His dreams are about to be realised when he meets a poor young lad named Esqueleto (Jimenez) and they decide to enter a competition as a tag-team.  To disguise his identity, Ignacio wears a mask in the ring and goes by the name of Nacho.

Ignacio and Esqueleto are comprehensively flogged in all their fights but the crowd falls in love with them.  They are the ultimate underdog and they keep coming back week and week for more punishment.  Their appeal with the audience sees their share of the prizemoney increase and this creates opportunities for them both.  Ignacio can buy fresh fruit and vegetables for the orphans at the monastery.  Esqueleto can buy fashionable clothes and a hair brush.

Jack Black does his best to make the material as funny as possible.  It has its moments but the dry, sarcastic humour falls well below the level achieved in Napoleon Dynamite.  For every joke which produces a chuckle, there’s another which falls flat.  It doesn’t have the continual stream of hilarious scenes that you’d expect from a great comedy.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 02 September 2006

The Book Of Revelation will be one of the more controversial releases of 2006.  Daniel (Long) is a dancer who is kidnapped by three masked women.  They chain him to a warehouse floor and sexually abuse him for roughly two weeks.  This is graphically shown in the film and hence it’s R rating here in Australia.

The three women eventually release Daniel but the experience leaves him a changed man.  He wants to find the women who did this to him but this will prove almost impossible since he never saw their faces.  Why is it that he wants to find them?  He never reported what happened to the police.  Does he want to get revenge and see them brought to justice?  Or was he strangely turned on by the experience and wants to know more about these women?

As curiously erotic as the film sounds, I was bored from the outset.  The dialogue, particularly at the start of the film, is incredibly stiff.  When I saw this film at the Brisbane International Film Festival, director Ana Kokkinos was asked why the conversations were so short on words and her response was that she was trying to show how isolated the characters were.  Well if that’s the case, then Kokkinos has overdone it.

Another annoying element of the film is that Daniel has a girlfriend who we meet at the start of the film.  If you think you can recognise either the eyes or the voice of one of the masked women then you’re spot on - it’s the same actress who plays the girlfriend.  Couldn’t they afford another actor?  I was extremely frustrated because it gives the impression that the girlfriend is involved when in fact she’s not.

The original novel, written by Rupert Thomson in 1999, is set in Amsterdam.  Given that it’s been put together by an Australian production team, Melbourne becomes the new setting.  It’ll be interesting to see how the film is received by Aussie audiences when released this week.  The French film Irreversible was almost banned in this country because an explicit scene in which a man raped a woman.  Is this film different because of the gender reversal?  Is it easier to watch a man getting raped by a woman on screen?  If you see it with friends, it’ll certainly provide some post-movie discussions.

Kokkinos last major film was 1998’s Head On with Alex Dimitriades.  It too was controversial but the plot and its characters were more intriguing.  Tom Long deserves a pat on the back for taking on the gutsy leading role but that’s as far my admiration goes for The Book Of Revelation.

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Written by Matthew Toomey

Created: 10 September 2006

As expected, this film was awful.  I’d had enough after the 10 minute introduction which featured more special effects than actual live footage.  The special effects didn’t look any good either.  As per the closing credits, the cast included Jaime Pressly, Sarah Carter, Devon Aoki and Australia’s own Holly Valance.  Once you’ve seen the film, you’ll understand why I think their whole performances were computer generated.

Based on yet another computer game, DOA: Dead Or Alive sees 16 of the best fighters from around the globe face off in a major tournament.  It is held on a remote island and run by a man known as Donovan (Roberts).  First prize is $10m but for some strange reason, there’s no media coverage.  Surely Mr. Donovan could make plenty out of endorsements!

The three leading female competitors are Tina (Pressly), a strong wrestler, Christie (Valance), a seductive thief, and Kasumi (Aoki), a Japanese princess.  Don’t think there’s any realism to this story because the “moves” that these three women have defy belief.  My best analogy would be to call it as a cross between Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and a straight-to-video Jean-Claude Van Damme movie.

I like to give ever movie a fair chance but it’s hard to see DOA: Dead Or Alive having much appeal to anyone but fans of the computer game.  If you’re going along because you’ve seen the ads where the women are scantily clothed, think again.  There’s no nudity whatsoever.

Everyone I’ve spoken to about this movie has groaned at the mere mention of its name.  It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that there’s no substance.  I’ve seen it, confirmed that it stinks, and now that this review is complete, will never have to think of it again.