Michelle Trachtenberg is an honor student by day and an ice skating hooker by night! Oh man, This is going to be so awesome! I cannot wait for it to come ou...

Wait a minute. I think I may be getting my movies confused here.

Oh look, ABS: THE MOTION PICTURE! I just hope the movie proves to be as good as the book on which it's based. I believe that book is known to you and I as Maxim Magazine.

Man, Judd Nelson has really let himself go.

So, have you read B-WARE 2005 yet? What do you mean, "no"? Don't you want to know about all the direct-to-video and made for the Sci-Fi Channel b-movies coming your way this year? Don't you want to know about MEGASNAKE, SOLAR STRIKE, MANSQUITO, REPTILICANT, THE STONEMAN, Stevem Seagal fighting undersea mutants, Casper Van Dien battling a 40-foot mummy, the world's first suicide bomber shark movie, and George Hamilton as the tannest Santa Claus ever? Of course you do. Click here now to B-Informed and B-Warned.

ELEKTRACUTION

Some of you have probably wondered how come I never did a review of CATWOMAN. Two reasons actually. The first being that it came out at a time when I was having health problems that would soon lead to my gall bladder surgery and so I just didn't feel like doing a write-up on it. The second reason was that as lame as the movie was I just never had very strong feelings towards it one way or another. CATWOMAN is more on the lame side than it is on the mind-numbingly awful side although it is impossible to deny that some it it is goofy as hell It's a superhero movie based around face cream, for crying out loud!

A mousy girl gets killed by corporate baddies and is revived by a mysterious cat. The Egyptian cat leads her to visits the cat lady. Sadly, not the crazy old cat lady from The Simpsons. If Halle's Catwoman ended up running around in that S&M costume hurling cats at people it probably would have been more entertaining. Here she learns that she's the latest in a long line of super powered catwoman, any one of which's tale would have proven more interesting.

"Have you been a bad boy today, Mr. Eisner?"

So how does becoming a feline version of The Crow affect a woman? For starters, she dresses up like a ridiculous looking Mouseketeer Dominatrix. She paints her toenails and cuts her hair so that she resembles Chase Masterson. She busts up overly loud parties, steals Harleys, and commits cat burglaries before changing her mind and returning the stolen merchandise. Her cat-like powers also gives her super balance, super agility, the ability to transform into super fast, wall-climbing CGI creation, and a constant need to strut around like she has something shoved very far up her ass. Gaining cat-like powers instantaneously makes one an expert with a bullwhip too. Most people don't know this but those that gain superhuman bird like powers are major badasses when it comes to using the mace. See Hawkman for further details.

I'm not even going to mention the romantic subplot involving her and a certain pretty boy refugee from Law & Order or their endlessly insipid attempts at forepolay. Or her chubby friend addicted to the face cream. Or the evil metrosexual corporate bigwig. Or the nightclub scene. Or the milk drinking scene. Or the Ferris Wheel scene. Or the prison escape scene. Or the repeated rooftop strutting scenes. Or the explicit sex scene with Billy Bob Thorton. Oh wait, that was in MONSTER'S BALL. Still, I'd rather not think about it.

After years of running from the movie police, Sharon Stone surrenders. The official charge: 1st Degree SLIVER.

She sets out to avenge her death and winds up battling an over-the-hill fashion model turned evil corporate executive portrayed by the over-the-hill Sharon Stone. Her cosmetic company has developed a new fountain of youth face cream with a nasty side effect - it causes one's skin to become hard as stone. Make that two nasty side effects because the face cream is also highly addictive. Corporate scientists warn that the cream is dangerous. Evil Miss Stone argues that the face cream works wonders and the fact that it is addictive will keep them coming back for more so they stand to make gazillions of dollars so she insists they continue to manufacture and market the stuff. Nobody ever mentions the gazillions of dollars worth of class action lawsuits that would surely ensue. Honestly, who needs Catwoman to save the day when you have lawyers?

Stone's addiction to the face cream has turned her skin into "living marble", which really comes in handy during kickboxing aerobic sessions with women in S&M cat suits. If her character really was a comic book supervillain I do believe her name would be "Stone Cold Bitch". That would probably be too clever for this movie though. This is a movie where the big hero/villain dialogue exchange goes like this:

"For you, Patience, it's game over!"

"Its overtime!"

The guy that wrote those lines of dialogue is now penning the live action TRANSFORMERS movie. Weep for Optimus Prime.

Halle Berry reacts with sheer horror as Sharon Stone tells her about what kind of movie roles she will be forced to take once her looks begin to fade and she turns 50.

And it's all over-directed out the wazoos by a French guy that goes by the singular name of Pitof, which is French for "So much for that career." He should say hello to BALLISTIC: ECKS VS. SEVER director Kaos in the unemployment line.

The biggest mistake was that they called the movie CATWOMAN. They should have dropped the DC Comics character name and renamed both the character and the movie BLACK PUSSY. There are enough dumb guys out there that would have seen the Halle Berry in the costume with that title and assumed she was finally doing a porno. $150 million opening weekend guaranteed! Of course then everyone soon realizes it's really a crappy superhero movie based around face cream.

For a while there comic book movies seemed to be on a roll but it seems to have been all downhill since SPIDER-MAN 2 came out. What happened? Before I get to my main target, excuse me if I take a few moments to vent about another recent comic book inspired movie that got on my bad side.

BLADE: TRINITY… Man, I haven't walked out of a movie with that bad a taste in my mouth since THE VILLAGE. The plot has never been the strong point for the BLADE franchise but the third time was not the charm as the whole film is a total mess loaded with ideas, none of which were followed through on. The Nightstalkers and Parker Posey's vampire clique, oh my god! Remind me again as to whom I was supposed to be rooting for. Was it the irritating group of wannabe hip vampires or the irritating group of wannabe hip vampire hunters?

I think a major factor in one's ability to enjoy BLADE: TRINITY depends on whether or not you liked the Hannibal King character. I sure as hell did not. I couldn't stand him. Detested him would be the best way to put it. I found him even more annoying than the black comic relief guy from ANACONDAS and that's saying something.

Despite having a physique like Brad Pitt, it seemed Ryan Reynolds was trying to be the white Marlon Wayans. Just one painfully unfunny wisecrack after another, usually without any rhyme or reason for him saying it. Only a handful of the smart ass comments that come out of his mouth had any context to what was going on in the scene. The majority of them just came from completely out of left field and were irritatingly juvenile. It's like Hannibal King suffered from some sort of annoying comedic sidekick form of Tourette's Syndrome. "Tell me, do you ever get laid?" Uh, excuse me Mr. King, that scientist guy you just outright insulted for no reason whatsoever other than your own inability to shut the hell up wasn't geeking out. No, he was explaining something that could have factored into the plot (assuming the movie bothered to actually have one, at least a reasonably coherent one). Apparently getting transformed into a vampire then back into a mortal causes one to develop Rob Schneider's personality. And shouldn't the fact that they have a cure for vampirism be a much bigger deal than just being a side note that gets tossed out there in passing? That sounds like a major plot point to me.

Jessica Biel's Abigail - Whistler's lovechild that he conveniently forgot about until this sequel - was nothing more than a poor woman's rave chick Buffy knock-off with super collagen lip action (Seriously, she really needs to lay off the collagen because she's starting to develop Meg Ryan's duck lips!) and it she doesn't need to be able to hear in order to fight hand-to-hand combat against multiple opponents coming from every direction. But hey, they had to make sure the iPod people got their product placement in as often as possible and you know how much the kids today love techno blasting at all times, even in the midst of a life or death battle. And how about that heartfelt music video style shower scene she had? I kept waiting for an Evanescence song to kick in.

Dracula has returned. Big whoop! He prances around like a male model auditioning for the lead in an Arno Vosloo biopic. He hates what vampires have become yet fails to notice that he's just as vacuous as any Anne Rice ever concocted. He talks of honor and the importance of being a warrior. That's really the only difference between him and the other vampires. Well, that and his ability to shape shift as well as transform into one of the demons from the game Diablo. This guy should have been the ultimate villain. Instead he came across like a demonic version of the bad guy from BEST OF THE BEST 2.

And who in their right mind cast Parker Posey as the leader of a powerful vampire clan? Oh, please! To think I had a hard time taking Stephen Dorff seriously in the first movie.

Much hoopla surrounded pro wrestler HHH making his film debut. I don't know why. His character was nearly as insignificant than The Rock was in THE MUMMY RETURNS. He never really has a showdown with Wesley Snipes. Instead he gets to be Ryan Reynold's bitch. I didn't see anything that led me to believe this guy has the potential to be a movie star. The new Conan, my ass! He does get points for having one of the stupidest vampire deaths I've ever seen.

I think that's one of the other things that ticked me off most about BLADE: TRINITY. David Goyer made the vampires into some of the wimpiest monsters ever. Looks like you could prick a vampire with a silver toothpick and they'd explode into sparks. And since falling from great heights doesn't seem all that fatal for vampires themselves I'm still not sure why it would seemingly do in their vampire dogs. Goyer's directing was mediocre to say the least. I would say the guy should to stick to just screenwriting but considering the script for this one, I think the guy should just write THE LAST BOY SCOUT 2 and get it out of his system.

Knowing that Goyer wrote the previous two BLADE films and now seeing this makes me wonder how much influence directors Norrington and Del Toro had in reigning in the script. Or maybe Goyer just totally lost it with this one by trying to make virtually everyone in the movie except for Blade either a comedy act or a Total Request Live escapee. I used to read the Nightstalkers comic book. I wonder if Goyer ever did? Sure didn't seem like it to me because all I saw was the WB Network version of them. It was obvious he was really going out of his way to make everything seem hip for lack of a better word but only succeeded in making the new characters annoying as hell. Far too much time was wasted trying to sell us on a potential Nightstalkers spin-off to the point that they might as well have put Nightstalkers in the title instead of Blade since after the first 10 minutes Blade himself was turned into a supporting character in his own film.

This fact was not lost on Wesley Snipes. His hatred for what was being done to his character in his own franchise film led to such rage at Goyer that he reportedly threatened to kill the guy right there on the set on several occasions. The hatred escalated to the point that Goyer actually went out and hired some Hell's Angels to remain on the set at all times to serve as bodyguards in case Snipes finally went after him. Then the movie comes out and Snipes refuses to do anything to promote it. Now that I've seen BLADE: TRINITY I can understand why he wanted to do Goyer some bodily harm and doesn't want anything to do with the movie.

Doesn't matter now anyway because the movie really under performed at the box office and hopefully that means we'll all be spared a Nightstalkers spin-off flick.

THE MONSTER MOD SQUAD

Speaking of spin-offs from comic book movies, why would anyone bother to make a spin-off movie based around a supporting character from a comic book film that was neither a huge success nor particularly popular, and all the more odd given that the character being spun-off from that film is the one whose character and back story was arguably the most gutted. There's no reason for such a movie to exist, a fact many people state beforehand, but one that becomes glaringly obvious after actually sitting through it. But Jennifer Garner is hot therefore she gets her own flick. It's the same reasoning used behind the decision to plan a spin-off film starring Halle Berry's Jynx character from the James Bond installment DIE ANOTHER DAY. Fortunately, sanity prevailed and the plug was pulled on that guaranteed failure. In the case of ELEKTRA, we could have only been so lucky.

ELEKTRA manages to do something almost unheard of - it succeeds in making ninjas boring. This is probably the dullest, least interesting, and least exciting ninja movie I've ever seen. I had to fight off the urge to just get up and walk out throughout the film.

If you like constant nonsensical flashback scenes that are supposed to give us insight into a character's troubled psyche but really don't amount to much of anything then you will love ELEKTRA. Admittedly, the movie does have more story and character development than most comic book movies but that's not really saying much and it's a completely moot point anywhere since the story and characters are the least interesting aspects of the movie. The special effects and the action scenes aren't much better.

This is also a perfect example of a movie being needlessly over-directed in a desperate and failed attempt to make really lame material seem interesting. The movie is so gratuitously over-stylized with slow motion action and unneeded surreal moments that I almost feel as if I owe Pitof an apology for all the stuff I've ever said about CATWOMAN. It also doesn't help that I saw this within 48 hours of having seen HOUSE OF FLYING DAGGERS, which while far from perfect is still managed to do right just about everything ELEKTRA managed to do wrong. As hard as it is to believe, I'd rather sit through CATWOMAN again than ELEKTRA.

The whole film is built around the concept that there are two rival ninja clans - one evil and the other as good as a clan of highly trained assassins can be - fighting over something called "The Treasure" that comes along once a generation or so and will tip the balance in favor of whichever clan possesses it or some crap like that. It seems Elektra is destined to protect "The Treasure" from the evil ninja clan.

Jennifer Garner is Elektra and despite being the same character she played in DAREDEVIL there are virtually no references to that movie other than the fact that she was killed. She also seems to have completely lost her Greek heritage and has a lot more personal problems than she did before. Elektra is constantly tormented by memories from her childhood, the most noteworthy one being the time she came across the devil zipping around her mother's bedroom at light speed. She also suffers from insomnia and obsessive-compulsive disorder, two aspects of her character included for no particular reason since they never really factor into the proceedings. Elektra is supposed to be this troubled and mysterious woman but Garner just cannot pull it off. Instead, Elektra comes across as a woman constantly either depressed, annoyed, or sulking. Part of me suspects this is because Garner realized how weak the script was and just feeling depressed, annoyed, and sulking about having to do the movie. Jennifer Garner is not a bad actress but she is not good in this movie at all. Maybe it's just the curse of what happens to women when they start trading bodily fluids with Ben Affleck?

Jennifer Garner's pole vaulting class gets off to an ominous start

Elektra is an assassin for hire but most believe she's just an urban legend because she was reportedly killed a few years earlier at least that's what we're told in a conversation between her opening victims. Of course it begs the question, if so many believe she's dead then how do they how do they manage to go about paying her millions of dollars to kill the rich and powerful? It's also established that Elektra likes to whisper to her victims just before she kills them. After the film's opening kill I don't recall it ever being done again.

Elektra even has her own agent who arranges her contract killings for a percentage of the purse. You'd think that for a guy that arranges hits for an assassin for hire he'd be quite the sleazy character. You'd be wrong. He's more of a Jerry Maguire type and quite the stand up guy. In fact, he nobly sacrifices his life later on in the movie in order to help Elektra and some others get away. It isn't even a case of him doing so because he longs for Elektra himself or out of guilt over the life that he's led. Nope, he just wants to do the right thing even if it costs him his own life. Call me cynical but this just doesn't sound like believable behavior for a guy helps set up the murder of others for money.

Elektra is contracted for her biggest kill yet, which turns out to be the hunky guy and his precocious 13 year old daughter staying out at a cabin by the lake across from the cabin where Elektra is hanging out at in between flashback sequences. Elektra cannot bring herself to kill these two because, well, she was once a precocious 13 year old herself and he's a superhunk. Instead Elektra bonds with the precocious 13 year old, at least bonds as much as an emotionally tormented paid assassin suffering from OCD can with a precocious 13 year old that thinks emotionally tormented assassins with OCD is a cool thing. She also has a bit of a romance going on with the girl's recently widowed Eurohunk dad for no other reason than because she's hot and he's a hunk and the laws of cinema require that they end up swapping saliva even though they have very few scenes together and even less chemistry.

The first round of evil ninjas shows up and Elektra quickly dispatches them. She wants to know why ninjas want them dead but he's not talking.

The ninjas in question are an organized crime and ninja clan known as The Hand, not to be confused with the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles nemesis The Foot, although they might as well have been seeing as how they're about as menacing and only slightly more competent.

The Hand operates out of their super secret hideout located on the top floor of an office high rise designed to look just like a Japanese pagoda, you know, so as to not draw attention to themselves. Yeah, nobody is going to take special notice of that structure on top of a building in the heart of a city. You'd think they'd operate out of someplace a little less conspicuous. Given the fancy, eye-catching architecture of the top floor of their building it makes you wonder what they do when they get inquiries about it.

***KNOCK ON THE DOOR***

"Hello, we're with the Travel Channel and we're doing a special on the great architecture of Japan. We would love to talk to you about the top floor of your wonderful building. That pagoda you have up their is..."

"Not interested! Go away!"

"Wait, we just want to… "

"I SAY GO AWAY NOW!"

***SLAMS DOOR***

"They know too much. Have them killed."

The main villain here is... Come to think of it, I don't recall his name. He was this young samurai kid whose father was leader of The Hand. I'll just call him Kid Evil. Dad Evil promised him that he could become the new leader if he successfully brought back the treasure. Dad Evil is played by Cary-Hiroyuki Tagawa, who I believe only agreed to be in this movie under the conditions that he be allowed to sit for the majority of the time and stare intently in place of most of his line reading. Kid Evil's main powers are his expert sword skills, lightning fast speed, ability to read people's minds, and unparalleled talent for staring even more intently than Tagawa.

His personal ninja clique also includes Bob Sapp, who became a pop culture phenomenon in Japan in recent years by competing in mixed martial arts competitions, where 300 pound black NFL/pro wrestling washouts are a novelty. Unfortunately, Sapp mania in Japan cooled off considerably after he proceeded to get his ass handed to him in the ring on numerous occasions by guys half his size. Here Sapp is cast as the nearly immobile ninja Stone, whose body is invulnerable to any and all damage unless it comes in the form of a falling tree.

Another ninja henchman is called Tattoo because his body is covered with tattoos of animals that he can bring to life to do his evil bidding. He's a walking nature gone amok movie. Of course, he just happens to have tattoos of animals that are all either fierce or perfect for whatever job he needs done at the time. No emus or speckled trout tattooed on his body. But despite having the power to turn his snake tattoo into seemingly thousands of serpents at will or use his eagle tattoo to spy on others from afar, he does not posses the power to notice someone slowly approaching him while making sarcastic comments before they go about snapping his neck.

And then there's Typhoid Mary, a Marvel Comics villainess with the ability to spread disease and suck the very life out of living things, not unlike Courtney Love. Played by the 2nd runner up in the Kelly Hu look-a-like contest, the character of Typhoid has been reimagined here as nothing more than a supporting henchman whose powers would seemingly make her the most dangerous of the group. She clearly has her own motivations since she doesn't always follow orders. Too bad they never bothered to go into any real detail about her character since she's the only one that's even remotely interesting. At one point she infects Elektra with her death skank via a lesbian kiss that succeeds in being as unsexy as it is uncompelling. Somebody tell Hollywood that the gratuitous lesbian kiss has been done so much it has gone from taboo to cliché.

Ninjas are supernatural beings, especially members of The Hand, so not only do they possess magic powers but they also disintegrate upon death thus proving how disposable these characters truly are. Being killed causes these ninjas to vaporize into a brightly glowing fog that I presume then floats off to Antonio Bay to terrorize Adrienne Barbeau and Tom Atkins.

With The Hand in pursuit, Elektra takes dad and daughter to her old mentor Stick, a wise old blind zen master who now uses his ninja powers to hustle people out of money at pool. Somewhere out there Sho Kosugi watches this scene and dies a little on the inside. The character of Stick is portrayed with a Mr. Miyagi meets Alfred the Butler like flare by a very much slumming Terence Stamp. Now that I think about it, Stamp's recently appeared in MY BOSS' DAUGHTER and THE HAUNTED MANSION so this is probably a step up.

Hey baby, wanna kneel before Zod?

Stick once banished Elektra from his clan because she had too much anger in her heart, although that seems to me like it would actually be an asset when being trained to be a perfect killing machine. I guess the last thing you need is a ninja with issues. Stick is also the one that brought Elektra back from the grave after her death in DAREDEVIL. And unless I misunderstood something, Stick was the one that set up Elektra to kill the father and daughter knowing full well she wouldn't be able to go through with it and thus become their protectors. Stick really is the ninja master of film script implausibility.

Eventually, Elektra ends up protecting dad and daughter out in the woods as The Hand attacks only to discover that the daughter is "The Treasure" they sought. "The Treasure" it turns out isn't a thing, but a person, a young super duper ninja in training to be more specific. She is destined to bring balance to the force or something like that. I'm still not clear on how having "The Treasure" will aid one side other than having a potential Skywalker on their hands.

By revealing that the father has been on the run with his daughter because he knows she the prophesized one destined to be the ultimate ninja of all time, ELEKTRA does manage to pull off something truly amazing. I do believe this is the first modern ninja movie where every single character is either a ninja or knows someone that is.

Just as things begin to look bleak for the forces of good, Stick and his band of merry ninjas show up and scare off the bad guys. Next thing you know, Elektra is watching the young girl demonstrate her considerable martial arts skills at the impromptu ninja scouts camp Stick's set up out in the middle of the woods. The young girl doesn't seem too thrilled to be "The Treasure" and yet she seems to get off on it. Elektra doesn't seem too thrilled that this girl that reminds her so much of herself is on the road to end up just like her and yet she doesn't mind teaching her a few tricks of the trade either. Stick continues to talk in riddles and dad remains a hunk.

ELEKTRA appears to be set in that fictional land known as Vancouver, USA. Ah, scenic Vancouver, USA, where the film is set in Anywhere, America and yet everything appears to be Vancouver, Canada. This would be all well and good if not for the very annoying fact that everything that happens in the movie just happens to be set within a certain distance of one another. The cabins by the lake, her agent's home, the billiards hall Stick hangs out in, the woods, and the ninja scouts summer camp are all within driving/walking distance of one another. I believe The Hand's pagoda high rise is the only setting that isn't and I'm only assuming it was in Japan because they never really came right out and said so. Everything in the movie seems to happen in within a several square mile radius including the final battle that takes place in Electra's home, which just happens to be within driving distance of the woods even though her family is supposed to be Greek, as in they lived in Greece!

In the end, Elektra uses the psychic internet to instant message Kid Evil and they agree to one final winner take all battle at her home where he killed her mom long ago for reasons never fully explained. Oh wait, he's evil. See, he was the devil in her flashbacks. That begs the question as to how old Kid Evil really is because he looks younger than Garner and yet he was still basically a kid about 15-20 years earlier. Questions like that really don't matter anyways since after changing into her snazzy red number that eccentuates her killer abs and engaging in a little Crouching Tiger, Flying Bedsheets, she and the increasingly annoying 13 year old get to recreate the end of THE SHINING before she finally kills Kid Evil and every ninja he brings along with him, including Typhoid, who meets her fate at the edge of a sai blindly thrown by Elektra from over 100 yards away through about a half dozen or so hedges. I don't care if Elektra has a sixth sense or not, making that shot was just too damn implausible for it's own good.

Her ninja skills were no match for the dreaded "Leaping Third Leg Round Kick"

Elektra officially declares them safe once and for all and able to go on with their lives without any threat from The Hand ever bothering them again even though Cary Tagawa is still sitting alone at the table in that high-rise pagoda staring intently into nothingness. And don't argue that The Hand will leave them alone because Kid Evil agreed to an all or nothing final showdown with Elektra. He wasn't leader of the group yet so he didn't have the authority to call off the dogs for an entire generation. Excuse me, but this story isn't done yet. Uh, the war isn't over. There are still a whole bunch of bad guys out there. Nonetheless, she tells them they're safe and walks off into the sunset. Actually, she walks directly into the camera and transforms into some flowing red satin sheets. But I digress.

Jennifer Garner supposedly developed nerve damage in her back while making this movie. I believe I developed synaptic nerve damage to my brain from watching it. I consider us even.

Boy, how I long for the days of Golan-Globus. I'll take AMERICAN NINJA 2: THE CONFRONTATION any day over this. Where are you, Michael Dudikoff? The world needs you now more than ever.

MY NAME IS SCOTT FOY AND I PAID TO SEE THE HULK