Vivica A Fox Page 2

Everything the kinetic, colorful, superficially violent "Kill Bill: Volume 1" lacked in depth and character is remedied tenfold in Quentin Tarantino's stunning, cunning conclusion to his epic revenge fantasy.

Gone are the absurdist bloodbaths and the superficial grindhouse storytelling, and in their stead the wily writer-director transitions (with masterfully effortless cinematic aplomb) into a character- and dialogue-driven feast of substance and surprises -- which is, nonetheless, still punctuated by spectacularly stylish swordplay.

After a winking mock-noir prologue of recap narration, Tarantino opens "Volume 2" with a parched black-and-white flashback to the wedding rehearsal (glimpsed throughout last year's installment) at which The Bride (Uma Thurman), an unnamed and incognito former assassin trying to go straight, was brutally gunned down (along with everyone in attendance) by her former compatriots.

Continue reading: Kill Bill: Volume 2 Review

Driven entirely by tedious clichés, vulgar stereotypes, tawdry and low-brow raunch-as-comedy gags, and the degrading, almost minstrel-show antics of a mugging, rubber-faced Cuba Gooding Jr., "Boat Trip" is a gay-themed movie aimed squarely and exclusively at stupid straight people.

The contrived mix-up plot finds Gooding and John Belushi-wannabe Horatio Sanz ("Saturday Night Live") trapped onboard a cruise ship full of gay men for a weeklong voyage, and writer-director Mort Nathan (who scripted the Farrelly Brothers' "Kingpin") finds endless excuses for them to act cartoonishly homosexual in order to score with the few women on board.

Gooding has fallen for the ship's dance instructor (Roselyn Sanchez) -- a steamy Latina who walks around in see-through linen tops and three pounds of eye shadow while professing "I don't care about makeup, I don't care about what I'm wearing." Meanwhile fat, ugly, loutish Sanz has the hots for a brain-dead bimbo (Playboy Playmate Victoria Silvstedt) from the "Swedish suntanning team" who was rescued from a shipwreck along with a dozen other swimsuit models. Inexplicably, she has the hots for him too -- not because there's anything attractive about him whatsoever, but because the director is transparently more interested in any excuse for bug-eyed boob shots than he is in anything remotely resembling story or humor.

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The line flubs and other outtakes that run with some movies' closing credits are often the best part of a bad comedy, but "Juwanna Mann" is the first movie I've ever seen in which the outtakes contain all the cut scenes the movie needed to be any good at all.

This trite "Tootsie" redeux set in the world of professional basketball stars Miguel A. Nunez Jr. (he was the voodoo practitioner in last week's "Scooby-Doo") as Jamal Jeffries, a rich, arrogant, showboating, ball-hogging, tantrum-throwing NBA star who gets kicked off his team, goes broke and decides to dress up in drag so he can play in the women's basketball league. But get this: Not until the those aforementioned outtakes are there any scenes of Jamal trying to transform himself, wiggling into skirts and working on his high-heel walk.

He just shows up at a try-out for the fictitious Charlotte Banshees decked out as an unconvincing dame named Juwanna, swinging his hips and talking in a falsetto. He's offered a contract after five minutes of practice, which he signs without reading.

Continue reading: Juwanna Mann Review

A movie that preaches dishonesty, trickery and manipulation as the keys to romantic happiness, "Two Can Play That Game" is populated by pathetically shallow "players" of both sexes and very talented actors trapped by their skin color in a tired genre of self-perpetuating stereotypes.

"Two Can Play" is about a successful black ad executive (Vivica A. Fox) who thinks her man, a successful black lawyer (Morris Chestnut), may be running around on her. Her solution for shaping him up (rather than confronting him and having an adult conversation or just leaving to find someone better) is to launch into a 10-day plan that includes breaking up, not returning his calls, making sure he sees her with other men, going to his house, getting him hot, then leaving, and a whole litany of other vindictive head games.

Of course, all of this is meant to be risqué and amusing, but in fact it just makes the movie's heroine look like the kind of shrill, immature, self-centered strumpet whom no man in his right mind would want to be saddled with.

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Following in the footsteps of the "Fractured Fairy Tales" cartoons, "The Princess Bride," "Ever After," "Shrek" and "A Knight's Tale" -- but never quite matching any of their wit or novelty -- "Ella Enchanted" is an amusingly self-aware fable of handsome princes, evil kings and one very plucky heroine caught up in a magic spell.

Aiming at the tween-ager crowd that made a hit of "The Princess Diaries," 2001's more modern twist on such girlish daydreams, light-hearted director Tommy O'Haver ("Get Over It," "Billy's Hollywood Screen Kiss") enlists "Diaries" charming star Anne Hathaway in the title role as a medieval teenager who was hexed at birth with an obedience spell by an irksome but well-meaning fairy (Vivica A. Fox, stuck in a mock-ghetto-fabulous stereotype).

Having grown up quite stubborn yet unable to resist any demand upon her, Ella manages to get through life keeping her curse on the QT until her widowed father brings home a wicked stepmother (Joanna Lumley) and two even worse and obnoxiously over-played step-sisters (Lucy Punch and Jennifer Higham), who quickly and cruelly figure out that they can make Ella their plaything.

Continue reading: Ella Enchanted Review