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I wasn’t all that interested in this film until it got rave reviews from Ebert & Roeper. After seeing it, I could have waited till video.

This time travel tale has Alex Wyler (Keanu Reeves, THE MATRIX) and Kate Forster (Sandra Bullock, WHILE YOU WERE SLEEPING) exchanging letters from the same lake house mailbox only two years apart. Kate has just left the all-glass lake house in 2006. Alex gets her letter to forward all her mail to her new address in 2004. When he goes to her apartment, it hasn’t even been constructed yet.

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Pixar has done it again. The studio that Disney bought is seven for seven. They never cease to entertain, move and inspire. I must admit that I wasn’t impressed with the trailers for CARS, fearing that director John Lasseter was too cost to the material and that no one at the studio had the guts to tell him he was making a bad movie. After seeing the film, I will no longer doubt Mr. Lasseter.

I will admit it isn’t the best Pixar has made, but it stands as a worthy addition to their library of quality films. Set in a world where everything is a vehicle even the insects, Lightning McQueen (Owen Wilson, WEDDING CRASHERS) is a hotshot rookie racecar, who is taking the world by storm. After barely racing to a three-way tie at the Piston Cup finals, Lightning must get to California in a week to compete in a tie-breaking race against racing legend The King (real racing legend Richard Petty) and perpetual second place finisher Chick Hicks (Michael Keaton, BATMAN).

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David Cronenberg (THE BROOD, A HISTORY OF VIOLENCE) is a director, who for most of his career has been fascinated with the effects of violence, the human obsession with it and how it relates to sex. In his CRASH, people were obsessed with the effects of car crashes on the human flesh and became sexual aroused by it. In VIDEODROME, Cronenberg first mined the sadomasochistic realm with a bit of Orwellian conspiracy mixed in.

Max Renn (James Woods, SALVADOR) is an exec at a low-rent cable network that specializes in violent and soft-core programming. Renn is in search of the newest, edgiest programming he can find. At the station, tech head Harlan (Peter Dvorsky, TWINS) scans the airwaves for programs from other countries or pirated broadcasts. They discover a show called Videodrome, which features masked men in a single room torturing naked victims. Renn must have it.

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STAR TREK III picks up where STAR TREK II left off. A damaged Enterprise space vessel is heading back to base. Admiral James T. Kirk (William Shatner) is heartbroken over the apparent death of his friend Capt. Spock (Leonard Nimoy).

However, what we soon discover is that before Spock died, he mind-melded with Dr. Leonard “Bones” McCoy (DeForest Kelley). There’s also speculation that the Genesis planet where Spock’s space casket landed may have started the process of re-generating Spock’s body at a rapid rate. Kirk’s son David Marcus (Merritt Butrick, FRIGHT NIGHT PART 2) and Vulcan lieutenant Saavik (this time played by Robin Curtis, instead of Kirstie Alley) are on Genesis studying the newly formed planet, but there may be a problem, besides the murderous Klingon Commander Kruge (Christopher Lloyd, BACK TO THE FUTURE) wanting the secrets of the Genesis project for himself.

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Based on Shugoro Yamamoto’s novel, PEACEFUL DAYS (which was also the basis of Kihachi Okamoto’s more complex film, KILL!), SANJURO serves as a sequel to Akira Kurasawa’s masterpiece, YOJIMBO.

A corrupt superintendent named Kikui (Masao Shimizu, HIGH & LOW) tricks a group of young samurai into believing their chamberlain Mutsuta (Yunosuke Ito, LONE WOLF AND CUB: SWORD OF VENGEANCE) is actually the corrupt one. As young leader Iori Izaka (Yuzo Kayama, THE SWORD OF DOOM) and his fellow samurai gather in a remote dwelling in the woods, a nameless ronin (Toshiro Mifune, SEVEN SAMURAI) explains to the young samurai the error of their ways and helps them avoid an ambush by the superintendent’s right hand man Hanbei Muroto (Tatsuya Nakadai, RAN). The nameless samurai helps the young samurai, who have a knack of rushing into situations before thinking them out fully, devise a way to first rescue the chamberlain’s wife (Takako Irie, GHOST CAT series) and his daughter, Chidori (Reiko Dan, RED BEARD) than later the chamberlain.

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In RUDY, director David Anspaugh returned to the genre that made his name — inspirational, underdog sports film. His HOOSIERS is one of the best sports movies ever made, if not the best. This time it’s not about an underdog team, but an underdog player.

Daniel “Rudy” Ruettiger (Sean Astin, LORD OF THE RINGS) is short and light, but has dreamed his entire life to play football for Notre Dame. His father (Ned Beatty, DELIVERENCE) thinks his dream is foolish, much like everyone else in town. But Rudy knows that if he doesn’t give it a shot and just languishes his life away in the steel mill with his dad and brothers, he’ll live his life always wondering “what if.”

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Like many Westerns, RIDE LONESOME follows a man on a mission. Ben Brigade (Randolph Scott, THE TALL T) is a bounty hunter, who has captured murderer Billy John (James Best, TV’s THE DUKES OF HAZZARD) with the intention to take him to Santa Cruz to be hanged. At a homestead in the desert, Brigade meets up with outlaws Sam Boone (Pernell Roberts, TV’s BONANZA) and Whit (James Coburn, CHARADE), who intend on killing Brigade so they can take Billy John in and receive amnesty. The beautiful Mrs. Lane (Karen Steele, MARTY) is alone on the farm after her husband ventured out to round up missing livestock and never came back.

As time goes by, the group will not only have to contend with pissed off Indians, but Billy’s brother Frank (Lee Van Cleef, THE GOOD, THE BAD AND THE UGLY) is on his way to save his younger sibling. But with Frank on his tail, why does Brigade seem to be in no rush to arrive in Santa Cruz?

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I know very little about THE PUNISHER comic books, so I cannot say how well the film follows the source material. As a film, however, it follows about a million other revenge films with little to call new.

Frank Castle (Thomas Jane, MAGNOLIA) is an FBI agent who after years of trying has retired after his last mission. However, on that mission, the son of powerful and paranoid gangster, Howard Saint (John Travolta, PULP FICTION), was killed. Saint sets out his right hand man Quentin Glass (Will Patton, ARMAGEDDON) to find out who set his son up, while him and his equally devious wife Livia (Laura Harring, MULHOLLAND DRIVE) mourn their son’s death.

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Samuel Fuller’s gritty film noir, PICKUP ON SOUTH STREET, follows the shadowy tale of a ditzy dame and her three-time loser. Candy (Jean Peters, NIAGARA) is delivering a package for her abusive ex-boyfriend Joey (Richard Kiley, THE PHENIX CITY STORY). While on the subway, her purse is pickpocketed by Skip McCoy (Richard Widmark, JUDGEMENT AT NUREMBERG), a three-time loser who just got out of jail on his last rap.

What both Skip and Candy don’t know is that in Candy’s wallet is a strip of microfilm that Russian spies are after. FBI agent Zara (Willis Bouchey, THE MAN WHO SHOT LIBERTY VALANCE) was on the subway when Skip pinched the film. So while Zara enlists Capt. Dan Tiger (Murvyn Vye, ROAD TO BALI) to help find the thief, Joey pressures Candy to use her “contacts” to do the same. Tiger calls on the services of grifter Moe Williams (Thelma Ritter, REAR WINDOW) to lead them to Skip.

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Some smarts help this film from being a total waste of time, but its boys club attitude renders it just a bad TOP GUN clone.

Lt. James Curran (Michael Biehn, TERMINATOR) is the leader of a Navy SEALs unit, which also includes cocky hotshot Dale Hawkins (Charlie Sheen, PLATOON). Some Lebanese terrorists have stolen some U.S. stinger missiles, which they use to shot down airplanes. So Curran looks up reporter Claire Varrens (Joanne Whalley, WILLOW), who is a Middle East expert and has contacts that could help Curran recover the missing rockets. Curran’s team also includes Chief Billy Graham (Dennis Haysbert, FAR FROM HEAVEN) and Dane (Bill Paxton, FRAILTY).

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