Q: What can I say? An excellent end to an excellent series! It never quite got the exposure it deserved in Asia, but by far, the best cop show with the best writing and the best cast on televison. EVER! The end of a great era. Sorry to see you go...
A: positive
Q: The Fluffer may have strong elements of porn industry truth to it - but that doesn't make up for the fact that it's pretty shabbily directed and acted - and with a very mediocre script.

B grade from start to the exceedingly drawn out finish.

It would be embarassing to think of the general public being offered this piece as an example of state of the art gay film making.

Hopefully it has a limited life in the gay film festival circuit and is allowed to die a natural death on video.

This film will open the Queer Film Weekend in Brisbane on April 10, 2002. I think its success there will be strongly influenced by the amount of alcohol consumed in the preceding cocktail party - they're gonna need it.
A: negative
Q: Being a fan of Billy Bob Thornton, and the diversity of his skills, I noticed this movie listed, and was surprised I hadn't heard of it.

I'd traveled more than usual during both the period it was being filmed in 2000, and when it hit theaters more than 2-1/2 years later (that passage of time is the first clue all was not well with the production).

Now Patrick Swayze can't act for sour apples, but Thornton has more than enough ability to make-up for the difference between them. And Charlize Theron is someone whom it would be a pleasure to see, even if it showed her watching paint dry.

Being curious, I checked this site's production info. It made a whopping < $600 per screen its opening weekend, and just over $400 each, after its month's theater run in latter 2002. Overall gross was $261K, which I'd doubt could cover cast and crew's hotel and food for a week on location.

The story is pretty benign, and even the use of the usually interesting locale of Reno is as dull as the rest of the goings-on.

It's something like several SNL bits all pieced together, none individually too great at all, and the overall presentation even worse.

Whatever, the expenses for this production had to be considerable - even if all worked for less than their usual fees - so the one thing which made it a barely tolerable opus was the quality of the filming and Billy Bob's present (albeit understandably somewhat laconic here , compared with his usual work.

Think of the three superb, totally diverse characters he portrayed in "Sling Blade," "Bandits" and "Bad Santa," and you know he realized this work was below standard, long before the viewers had the opportunity to confirm this. One star for him, even here, and one because production was better than, say, the typical "Lifetime" flick.
A: negative
Q: Reed Diamond plays a man suffering from amnesia who's been in a mental asylum for over a decade after he was found wondering the back roads with blood on his hands. The doctors want to test out an experimental new drug that'll return his lost memories if it works. But when the drugs give him hallucinations of a demon, he chooses to escape instead. While outside he befriends a young boy whose stepfather (Greg Grunberg) mistreats his mother, won't let her near the darkroom in his basement & acts suspicious in general.

While the general 'mystery' of the film is a tad easy to identify way before it's revealed, I found Mr. Diamond's acting to be enthralling enough to keep my attention throughout. (In the interest of full disclosure, I've been a huge fan of his since Homicide and his brief, but extremely pivotal, role in The Shield up through Journeyman & Dollhouse) Not a great film nor a good one, but serviceable enough. Although I did like it better than the previous films that I've seen from Director/writer Michael Hurst (Room 6, Pumkinhead 4, Mansquito)

Eye Candy: one fleeting pair of boobs in a hallucination

My Grade: C-
A: negative