Movie review: al-Qaeda's latest offering

I am ending several weeks of comparative quiet on the blog site with this, which I stumbled across tonight thanks to Julie D. at Happy Catholic. I don't watch many movies, and in fact have only seen a couple all summer, accompanied by Vanessa; and thus I rely heavily on trusted movie critics in deciding which films I do want to see. There are two very good reasons for this, of course: the first is that so many movies spue forth gratuitous sex, violence, and vulgarity, which I neither want nor need; and the second is that at about $20 per shot when I purchase two tickets, popcorn, a drink, etc., it is just plain ridiculously expensive to attend a movie theater these days. Time was when a 9-year-old kid could go alone to watch something like Teen-Agers from Mars and pay less than a dollar for the whole package; and what's more, while the movie might be inane and idiotic, at least it was guaranteed to be clean, wholesome inanity and idiocy.

One film just released in the past few days had pretty much escaped my notice, although I did see it mentioned briefly in the papers. This was the new short film released by al-Qaeda -- you know, the one that threatens the cities of Los Angeles and Melbourne, Australia with whatever kind of mischief Osama's boys would like to inflict upon them. Julie, who knows her way around Blogdom better than most of the rest of us, found this review , and provided a link to it on HC. Having read and pondered the movie review, I think I will skip this film as well. I'd like to get Chris Hicks's take on it, though; I suppose he'd agree with this reviewer and call it a turkey, and have a recording of a live turkey gobbling in the background as he announced his verdict.

So my advice: Read the review, but skip the movie. A couple of hours with an video or DVD of an Ed Wood film -- or perhaps even Teen-Agers from Mars, if you can find it -- will be time far better spent.