A funny thing happened on my way to reviewing the long-awaited Special Edition "Monster Squad" DVD: I couldn't find a copy! From Best Buy ("we'll have some copies next week") to Circuit City ("monster what?") to Walmart (gimme a break) I wandered one sweaty Tuesday afternoon, slowly becoming more convinced that the DVD missed its release date. At one store I did see an empty display section with a sticker that said "Mon Squ" next to the sticker price, but no DVDs. Eventually I found a Target that had a few copies, so at least there's a happy ending. Not only did a finally get a copy of this amusing little movie (and all its "special edition" goodies), but I did my part for horror geeks everywhere. Next time something like "Monster Squad" comes up on the order sheets, I bet Best Buy, Circuit City and Walmart snag a few lousy copies. (Oh, but "Hills Have Eyes 2"? You could fill a million landfills with the Hills 2 DVDs I had to wade through on my journey.)
So now. After about twenty years, how does Fred Dekker's cult favorite hold up? Is it actually an entertaining movie -- or has the passage of years contributed to turn a kitschy little curiosity into an overrated "niche" item? Well, after watching the movie for the first time since its theatrical run I can safely say ... it's fun stuff indeed. Clearly low-budget and more than a little outdated in many ways, but still fun stuff. It's like a combination between "Stand By Me," "The Lost Boys," and "The Goonies" that was directed by someone who admires the Joe Dante school of movie-love. And when a movie's this in love with movies in general, that's a pretty tough flick to knock.

What a gorgeous film, what strong performances, what exhilarating images and -- yes, what sweeping romantic melodrama. The kind of movie that is a movie, with all that the word promises and implies.

Baz Luhrmann dreamed of making the Australian "Gone With the Wind," and so he has, with much of that film's lush epic beauty and some of the same awkwardness with a national legacy of racism. This is the sort of film described as a "sweeping romantic melodrama," a broad family entertainment that would never have been made without the burning obsession of its producers (Luhrmann for "Australia," David O. Selznick for "GWTW"). Coming from a director known for his punk-rock "William Shakespeare's Romeo + Juliet" and the visual pyrotechnics of "Moulin Rouge," it is exuberantly old-fashioned, and I mean that as a compliment.

"David worked on that film Australia," someone whispered.
I wandered over and introduced myself, asking what he worked on during the project. 'David' explained that Baz had employed him to ensure the authenticity of the Aboriginal language captured on film.
"It was lucky," he said. "If they'd filmed a few kilometres further north it would have been another language spoken in that country and someone else would have got the job."
David had just got back to the Kimberley after a couple of weeks post-production work in Sydney. He and his wife had bought their son down for treatment at Princess Margaret Hospital and were staying at Ronald McDonald House while they were in town.
"Don't like this cold weather," he said with a rue smile.
To him the work was no big deal. He was just a bloke from the Kimberley who was lucky enough to land a job with a pretty big film that rolled into his corner of this vast continent. His son also managed to land work as a stand-in actor to one of the lead cast members. It was after this meeting that I decided that yes, I would go and see Australia at the cinema and add my few dollars to the gross ticket sales that determine the success or failure of a film. If Baz was prepared to go to such lengths to ensure the authenticity of the Aboriginal language spoken in that particular area of Western Australia where the film was shot, then he's got my two thumbs-up.

The dark comedy genre of movies is one that has a relatively small fan base, but it’s hard to find a more devout group of movie goers. A good dark comedy movie manages the difficult task of blending the dark and twisted with the hilarious, often delivering both at the same time. If you’re watching a dark comedy and laughing your head off, but feeling horribly guilty about it at the same time, then the film has successfully managed that balance.
One of the most interesting things about dark comedies is that individual preference plays such a huge part in determining which are “best.” Three top ten lists could have thirty different movies on them depending on what worked for each viewer and what didn’t. The challenge of the film makers is to make a funny movie twisted, but not so much that the audience “Gets off the train.”

Director Jean-Baptiste Andrea's wicked, jet-black comic thriller Big Nothing stars Friends mainstay David Schwimmer as Charlie Wood, a onetime American professor now married to a policewoman, Penelope (Natascha McElhone) and living in Oregon. As the story opens, Charlie takes a job as a telephone operator at an Information Technology call support center, but is promptly fired for making offensive comments to a customer. One of Charlie's shadier co-workers, Gus Dickinson (Simon Pegg) wheedles him into his plan to blackmail a priest, Rev. Smalls (Mitchell Mullen) by using "inside" information from the company that demonstrates the minister's obsession with internet porn. Thus begins an endless series of Mametian twists and turns involving double-cross, mistaken identity, forced drownings, poisonings, infidelities and cold-blooded mariticide, as the men attempt to collect on the money but run head-first into one outrageous conflict after another. Alice Eve, Mimi Rogers and Jon Polito co-star