The new show “Chuck” starring fairly newcomer actors, is definitely going to be around for a while. At least I hope so, because I really feel like it’s one of the best new shows on TV.  If  you want to tune into a show that, granted is far fetched and often ridiculous in it’s story lines, but will have you snickering throughout, especially if you are a Generation X’er, then Chuck is your show. 

The show (remember it’s far fetched) centers around a happy go lucky “nerd” named Chuck.  We find out in the course of a few episodes that Chuck is a virtual genius who is gifted with remembering codes, schematics and faces and names when shown flashes that would be simply subliminal to anyone else.

His old room mate, who is some sort of high level CIA spy who has supposedly gone rogue, sends him an email upon his untimely death by another of the show’s main characters, the humorless, crabby Casey, flawlessly portrayed by an X Files veteran actor. 

Chuck receives what is called the intercept email, and he is forever embedded with years worth of government secrets that many would kill to get their hands on.  Two agents are assigned to protect Chuck, well his brain actually, and hilarity ensues.  Chuck is thrown into situations where there is gunfire and other bad stuff and still somehow maintains his gosh-golly persona and sense of humor through it all. 

By the way, if you watch it, you’re gonna love the lead character.  Actually, you’ll love the whole cast, who seems to be hand picked by a very good casting director.  Bottom line on Chuck : If you love irreverent comedy and don’t mind far fetched story lines, Chuck is your man! 

Wow.  Where to begin with this one?  The movie “The Machinist” is perhaps most well known for the obvious suffering that actor Christian Bale went through to lose what looks to be half of his body weight for a role. 

This movie is not for the faint of heart, as it contains images of such extreme starvation and emaciation that it’s almost too disturbing to watch in some scenes when they are so obviously going for shots that display how truly sick and at deaths door Bale looks.

The movie is about a machinist, Christian Bale, whom we see from the beginning of the movie is obviously a man who either has constant tapeworm or is a disturbed human being.  You see, Bale’s character Trevor Reznik, a guy who’s just a blue collar worker at a machine shop, has had insomnia for a long time, for reasons that we don’t find out until the end of the film.

Trevor has a sort of girlfriend in Jennifer Jason Leigh’s call girl character, but she is really of no consequence in this film, although I do usually like her acting.  She too is a person who looks as if they’ve been through the ringer and back a couple times, only it is because of her profession and the folks she surrounds herself with.

Trevor is painted as losing his mind.  Or is he?  He begins to have what appear to be either hallucinations or one hell of a conspiracy against him to make his life a living hell when he starts to suspect that the men in the machine shop are turning on him.  Then a mysterious character shows up whom Reznick can’t figure out the origins of.

We see Trevor on the verge of insanity as he nods off several times, but can never really fall asleep because he is always interrupted.  He’s letting his bills go unpaid, and obviously is spinning out of control, but for what we have no idea.  Until the end.  And I don’t want to give anything away, but I do love the ending and it’s idea. 

This movie shows that the mind is a powerful thing, and guilt is a powerful emotion that can drive one insane if unrectified.  Rent this one if you like psychological thrillers, but not so much a lot of action.  This is one for “thinkers” who don’t mind lack of explosions and chase action for a good payoff ending. 

All in all, I liked it and as usual Christian Bale, who is one of the most talented actors of our generation, if not the most talented, delivers on this one as usual.  He shows such a depth of range in the characters he portrays, and that kind of undying dedication to his roles that is hard to find these days. 

I remember this movie making kind of a big stink when it came out back in the year 1986, when I was still but a kid who wasn’t allowed to watch movies that ran in the erotic, weird vain like Blue Velvet does.  Blue Velvet is considered a David Lynch classic, and some of the camera angles and different coloring in the movie definitely warrant that type of attention.

I’m a David Lynch fan.  Well, let me put it another way – I like Twin Peaks a lot.  However, his movies actually go beyond the weird and quirky and into a place that makes you feel, well, kinda dirty when you’re done watching them.  Blue Velvet is the notorious movie where Isabella Rosselini gets totally naked and exposed in so many other ways that it makes you feel weird watching the classic beauty icon of the eighties naked – and not flatteringly so either. 

There is even a scene that is a sort of mock-rape scene that makes anyone with a conscious a at least a little uncomfortable watching.  Kyle Mclachlan plays a character that we are supposed to somewhat empathize with, and yet he has such  an ovious pervert streak that it’s hard to root for him in any real way.  You almost feel like he’s dumb enough to get killed in the end. 

The movie also has a somewhat contrived plot.  It’s supposed to be somewhat of a murder mystery, but really all it becomes is a showcase of weirdness and the darkness that lurks around every corner in small, seemingly safe small towns.

If you don’t mind feeling a little strange after you watch something, you might want to rent it.  However, if you’re not a David Lynch fan, don’t even bother.  I feel like my time could have been much more wisely used for that hour and a half that’s for sure! 

We just recently netflixed the movie “Mr. Brooks” with Kevin Costner, William Hurt and Demi Moore, and I have to say it was a pleasant surprise.  I even got through it with a hypercritical movie critic boyfriend watching it and slamming it for no apparent reason in the first opening scenes!  Kevin Costner does well as the seemingly normal, but definitely not normal Mr. Brooks.  Mr. Brooks is a wealthy businessman who apparently made his millions in some sort of glazing and product packaging industry.

We find out early on that his dual personality, played by William Hurt, is a cold blooded serial killer who keeps asking Mr. Brooks to do it again and again.  We also find that Mr. Brooks himself isn’t such a bad guy, but he’s sick – he’s very sick and part of him enjoys the killing as well, as his alter ego points out to him so many times. 

The movie about a split personality is played out uniquely, in that it actually shows William Hurt and Kevin Costner talking to eachother constantly, even when there are others in the room.  Of course, Kevin is not talking to himself, but this is how the movie chooses to portray his split personality and his communications with his second voice, and I have to say, they do pull it off. 

It seems hokie to describe it but they do a very good job of pulling off the talking out loud thing without it seeming invasive or silly to the other characters that are onscreen.  At times the movie reminds me of a sort of Silence of the Lambs, because the idea is that you love to hate the bad guy, but you are also secretly cheering for him to get away with it.  This movie accomplishes that dichotomy well. 

Also, a pleasant surprise was the usually annoying Dane Cook, who plays a guy who’s got dirt on Costner, but wants to exchange it for making him his first protege.  You might even say Cook channels himself into the role, which makes it work, ’cause you really don’t like his character.  He’s not smart, he’s sloppy, and he’s a violent man who can’t seem to translate his ill will into action.   

OK, I do like the actor Shia Lebouf, I think he’s really a gifted kid, even if his parts tend to portray the same type of character, he seems to be very comfortable in front of the camera.  He also seems to be a likeable guy in real life, and since they say actor’s personalities do come out on camera, that makes him all that much more appealing to audiences. 

The girl that appears as his love interest, her name escapes me, was horrid though.  She acted the “sexy” part way over the top, appearing awkward and almost embarrassing trying to play the coy, sex kitten to the extreme.  At the end of the movie, my boyfriend and I agreed that this was definitely a film that was made for teenagers, with a plot that was ok, but maybe not executed as well as it could have been.  The acting was pretty solid, with the exception of the female love interest. 

The plot is that Shia, a trouble kid whose father’s death he witnessed in a car accident where he happened to be driving haunts him, is placed under house arrest after he punches a teacher in school for making reference to his dead father. 

While under house arrest, Shia begins spying on his neighbors with his deceased dad’s binoculars, and he becomes so entrenched in the neighbor’s lives that he might be having paranoid delusions, and might not. 

This is in question when he thinks his neighbor might be a serial killer.  The believability factor and far fetchedness of the script at some points distracts from the movie scenes.  Things like the idea that neighbors would just leave their windows wide open while engaging in acts that seem pretty private is kind of ridiculous.

Some of the dialogue is corny, such as when Shia, a teenage kid, spouts off some deep romantic speech to the love interest.  If you’re into cheap thrills, you might want to rent it.  It starts off well, and has an ok ending, some of the acting (the girl) is distracting and the plot is unbelievable at times, but it is entertaining for the most part.