Lost in Translation (drama): If you like don’t like character movies, you can skip this one. If you do, this one is very subtle. Bill Murray stars in this story of two lonely people who spend a couple of unlikely days together in modern Japan. A

Swimming with Sharks (drama): Kevin Spacey plays the biggest prick boss ever, and his new employee decides to tie him up and take him to task. It was a fun ride watching Spacey as a mean boss, but the ending didn’t make a lick of sense to me. B

WonderFalls (TV): This is a well-written series that aired only 2 episodes on TV due to a bad time slot. It’s about a gen x girl who works in a souvenir shop in Niagara Falls. She’s disaffected, sarcastic, and inanimate objects talk to her. You never know if she’s insane or if some power is making the things talk, but it’s a fun ride. B+

Dead Like Me (TV): This 18 year old chick gets killed by a toilet seat that fell off a space station and becomes a grim reaper. It sounded like a great concept, but I couldn’t really get past 3 episodes. I felt like I was getting tricked into watching Touched by an Angel or something. C

Shark Tale (kiddie): Will Smith is in this stupid Disney cartoon about a shark that doesn’t want to be a shark. I can’t really complain about it though. It left me feeling good. B+

I, Robot (sci-fi): I always hoped that the Fresh Prince of Bel Air would star in a film adaptation of an Asimov book. And now here it is. It was done pretty well, and the action sequences were pretty good, but it really seemed to be a CGI fest for grown up nerds who read the book when they were kids and didn’t think it was really good enough to read again. B

Transporter (action): This had enough kick-ass kung-fu action to keep me watching and a fair amount of really lame boy meets girl crap to slow it to a crawl. I think the lamest (yet best part) of the movie was when this chick shoots her father and says with tears in her eyes, “He was a bastard, but he was my father.” [Groan] B-

Crash (drama): I can’t say that there’s really a cohesive plot to this movie, but takes on race relations in the uncomfortable way that “Do The Right Thing (That’s it? That’s it.) did. Unlike “Do the Right Thing” there were so many twists and turns that I found it nearly impossible to guess what was going to happen next. Despite it’s complete lack of Radio Rahim “Love/Hate” rings, I was really impressed with this movie. (Note for my co-workers: According to the credits and for the people at work, Ludacris’s real name is Chris Bridges.) A

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