Shameless Self Expression

Set in rural Tennessee, Kris Kristofferson stars as grizzled second-rate country musician (or at least never a mainstream success) E.F. Bloodworth, who up and left his wife (Frances Conroy) and kids some 40 years ago. Now after a mild stroke, he sends word that he’s coming back after all these years to make peace (with himself perhaps?), which brings up old wounds, resentment and anger in his sons, especially eldest son Brady (W. Earl Brown), who is paranoid and claims to be able to put curses on people. Val Kilmer is Warren, a hard-drinkin’ and whorin’ sort who is not often sober and completely irresponsible. Dwight Yoakam plays the frequently hostile Boyd, whose teen son Fleming (Reece Thompson), is an aspiring writer and perhaps the only redeemable male member of the family. He’s also the only member of the family who seems to have any time for E.F. Meanwhile, Yoakam spends much of the film looking for Fleming’s floozy mother, who has apparently left Yoakam for another man. Sheila

Bogey plays an aging sportswriter and occasional press agent who reluctantly accepts a nicely paid gig from mob-connected promoter Rod Steiger (creating his own contender!- sorry, had to do it...I need help), to promote his new find; a   lunkheaded Argentinean behemoth played by Mike Lane. Physically he looks unstoppable, but truth is, he’s completely useless in the ring once that bell sounds (Kinda like WWE’s The Great Khali, but enough about my favourite pastimes). But with fixed fight after another, and Bogey’s shameless promotion, the big lug starts to believe in himself. Bogey, meanwhile, starts to have a crisis of conscience, seeing how poorly treated the naive fighter is, and watching a doomed fight between Lane and one-time champ Gus Dundee (Pat Comiskey), who has been warned against fighting after taking a pounding from brutal champ Max Baer (pretty much playing himself, as a major SOB). Jan Sterling is Bogey’s quietly disapproving wife, Harold J. Stone is his morally outr

Cameron Diaz stars as a teacher whose dreams of quitting teaching and marrying a rich man go kaput, and so she goes back to teaching the sixth grade. Actually, teaching would suggest something involving effort, interest, and aptitude, qualities that Diaz doesn’t seem to possess. Instead, she just shows movies about teaching ( “Stand and Deliver” , “Lean on Me” , “Dangerous Minds” , etc), whilst barely even pretending to give a crap. She also gets drunk and high, at various points. An over-eager rival teacher named Amy Squirrel (Lucy Punch) has Diaz’s number very quickly, but no one listens to her, including the putz principal (John Michael Higgins). Justin Timberlake plays a new, high-fiving, do-gooder substitute teacher whom Diaz attempts to get her claws into when she   notices him wearing an expensive watch. Meanwhile, she also decides that her quest to find a rich man requires her to get a boob job (Why not find a time machine to take Diaz back to 1994’s “The Mask” ?). Jason Sege

Review: The Grasshopper Jacqueline Bisset stars as a 19 year-old Canadian (despite Bisset looking every one of her 25 years and maybe more than that) who is bored and unfulfilled, and ventures to LA for supposed stardom and to join her boyfriend (Tim O’Kelly). Through circumstances not worth bothering about, she ends up in Vegas with comedian Corbett Monica. She eventually meets up with O’Kelly in L.A. but has by now been bitten by the Vegas bug, and decides to head out once more to become a near-topless Vegas dancer (sharing the stage with actresses with less problems with nudity than Ms. Bisset must’ve had at the time). Soon she hooks up with an African-American former footballer (real-life Cleveland Browns legend Jim Brown) who is now employed by a hotel to greet people. They eventually marry, but things go awry when mob-connected sleazebag businessman Ramon Bieri gets rough with her and Brown exacts a fistful of revenge. After this, she becomes involved with kindly, elderly m