About this product: If there's such a thing as a destined-to-be-cult film, The Fist Foot Way is one. Self-aggrandizing tae kwon do instructor Fred Simmons (Danny McBride, Drillbit Taylor, Tropic Thunder) belittles his young and inexperienced students and snipes at his wife Suzie (Mary Jane Bostic). But when marital trouble strikes, Fred's sense of self capsizes and he starts acting out in wildly inappropriate ways. When a pilgrimage to meet his hero, sleazy martial arts champion Chuck "The Truck" Wallace (Ben Best), has terrible results, Fred must confront his demons--and, this being a comedy, his struggle is wildly unsuccessful. McBride is a white trash American version of Ricky Gervais (BBC's The Office); he's created a character whose excruciatingly bad behavior can't be dismissed because it's too real. Jeff Simmons is petty, tyrannical, insecure, delusional, lacking any sliver of dignity--i.e., human in all the worst ways. Many people will find The Foot Fist Way unendurable, but some members of the moviegoing public (and you'll know who you are the moment you see this movie) are going to find it painfully funny, so funny they'll have to turn away and cringe from recognition even as they succumb to fits of giggles. --Bret Fetzer
About this product: Ray Bradbury adapted his own novel for Something Wicked This Way Comes, Jack Clayton's beautiful rendering of the turn-of-the-century fantasy of a mysterious carnival that literally blows into a small town to taunt and tempt the inhabitants. Jonathan Pryce (Brazil), the handsome but demonic proprietor of Dark's Pandemonium Carnival, preys upon the vanities, the delusions, and the regrets of the townspeople by granting their wishes at the expense of their souls. Jason Robards, as the meek librarian Charles Halloway, becomes his unlikely nemesis when his son Will, with his best friend Jim Nightshade (a deliciously dark name in its own right), discovers the secret of Dark's nightmarish carnival. When they become hunted by Dark's minions (including Pam Grier as the beautiful and mysterious Dust Witch), Halloway must confront his own fears and regrets to save the boys. Clayton captures the idyll of childhood in the fall with rich autumnal colors, his camera gliding along with the energetic boys as they tear through field and forests. The climax, however, gets lost in a cacophony of competing special effects, imaginatively visualized but never very terrifying, as if producer Disney resisted the uneasy undercurrent of the story. It's more dark fantasy than horror, a nightmarish adventure filtered through the memory of a man remembering his childhood in mythic terms. --Sean Axmaker
About this product: This implausible, but effective 1987 film stars Kevin Costner (Bull Durham, Wyatt Earp) as a naval officer and CIA agent who may not be what he seems. This sexy thriller is an espionage mystery and an enigmatic character study of two men trying to be faithful to the loyalties they hold. Costner begins a torrid love affair with the mistress (Sean Young) of the Secretary of Defense, but when she turns up dead, Costner is implicated in a web of intrigue that threatens national security and exposes personal secrets at the highest levels. The Secretary and his men try to cover up the affair while simultaneously searching for a Soviet mole in their ranks. Featuring an exciting chase sequence through the Washington, D.C., subways, No Way Out is a standard issue thriller that nonetheless keeps the action coming. --Robert Lane
About this product: This irresistible Oscar winner from writer-director Leo McCarey (An Affair to Remember) stars Bing Crosby as a low-key, crooning priest who joins the parish of a no-nonsense but sweet old Irish man of the cloth (Barry Fitzgerald). While Bing turns local toughs into a choir, the elder priest worries over the church building fund and whether he'll get a chance to see his old mother back in Ireland before she dies. One would have to have a heart of stone not to be won over by this charmer, with a lovely ending guaranteed to make you bawl for a week. --Tom Keogh
About this product: Somebody in Hollywood thought there was some fish-out-of-water potential in this teaming of wild man Woody Harrelson and slow-burning Kiefer Sutherland as a pair of New Mexico cowboys who go to New York to tame the wild, wild, uh ... East. Well, they were mistaken, because this 1994 action-comedy is little more than a tiresome reworking of Crocodile Dundee. Woody and Kiefer head for the Big Apple to rescue the illegal-immigrant daughter of one of their rodeo buddies (who has mysteriously disappeared), and what they discover is a sweatshop operation run by a hot-tempered thug (Dylan McDermott, before his role on TV's The Practice). That's when the boys start using their ropin' and shootin' skills to foil the bad guys. One measure of this film's credibility is the inevitable scene of the boys riding on horseback through the gridlocked streets of Manhattan. Uh huh. You know how it goes... you just have to go with it or marvel at the sheer stupidity of it all. Of course, forget all the sniping if you're a fan of Harrelson or Sutherland--they're both doing their best under the burden of disadvantage. --Jeff Shannon
About this product: Clint Eastwood's 1978 comedy introduces Filo Beddoe, a truck driver and mechanic whose daily life is an absurd grind. He's constantly coming up short on money, love, and anything else to help him get through the day, while also saddled with a loony mother (deliciously played by Ruth Gordon), a best friend (Geoffrey Lewis) who's not too swift on the uptake, and an orangutan named Clyde who fights almost as well as Clint. While moonlighting as a bare-knuckle fighter, Clint finally meets the girl of his dreams (Sondra Locke), a snooty country singer who rebuffs him even as he pursues her, trailed by bikers and brawlers. It's Eastwood's magnetism and charm that make this more than a mere string of comic sketches, and things move along quickly enough to be entertaining, if a little thin. Clyde is a natural scene-stealer, but it's Ruth Gordon's crazy, cranky old coot who steals the movie. --Robert Lane
About this product: People who cherish the post-Terms of Endearment, post-reincarnation phase of Shirley MacLaine's career might be surprised to discover just how sexy and kooky she was in a past life--that is, the first few years of her movie career. After the triumphs of Some Came Running and The Apartment, MacLaine had a run of starring roles, including this elaborate comedy vehicle. What a Way to Go! cast MacLaine as an unlucky bride whose husbands meet early deaths, leaving her wealthy but unhappy. Gimmick casting of the hubbies adds a bit of dash: Dick Van Dyke as a simple country storekeeper, Gene Kelly as a two-bit entertainer, bearded Paul Newman as a Brandoesque, bohemian painter in Paris. In the movie's best turn, Robert Mitchum gets to play a Howard Hughes character, and Dean Martin and Robert Cummings are around for the ride.
A flabbergasting parade of Edith Head outfits keeps MacLaine hopping, and each segment has a Hollywood fantasy based on MacLaine's vision of her passing marriages (silent comedy, sexed-up foreign flick, splashy musical). Typical of a certain kind of super-production of the era, the film is impressive rather than entertaining, busy rather than funny. Perhaps hiring J. Lee Thompson, who directed The Guns of Navarone, was not the best idea for this Comden-Green script. It snuck in as one of the top ten box-office grossers of 1964, and it has one great surrealist sequence where Gene Kelly orders his house and grounds to be painted entirely pink. --Robert Horton
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