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Futurama as a TV series has been canceled for awhile, but thanks to Fox Home Entertainment, you can get your (pretty) regular dose of the crew with direct-to-DVD movies. First one Bender’s Big Score ended with a tear in the space, and the new movie The Beast With a Billion Backs picks up right afterwards. After discovering this tear could lead to another universe, Dr. Farnsworth mounts an expedition with his incredibly expandable crew. Fry, after discovering that his girlfriend has 4 other live-in boyfriends, dumps her and is full of sorrow. Unable to take it, Fry sets out to the other universe.

On the other side of the tear is a being with tentacles called Yivo. Yivo makes Fry his emissary as the tentacles invade our universe. Soon everyone in the universe has a tentacle to their neck as a way of, umm, being together with Yivo.

The movie is, as you’d expect, full of pop references and in-jokes. Even the opening sequence has a tribute to Steamboat Willie with Futurama characters of course. Futurama’s humor is not as random as on Family Guy, another canceled but revived animation. The theme of this movie – love, sex and relationship – is refreshingly adult even for the series and it shows how well the series is maturing. This movie is strongly recommended to Futurama fans, although newcomers to the series should first finish the TV series before embarking on the movies.

Rating: 70%

Spoof films show no sign of slowing down, and Meet the Spartans clearly shows the genre needs a reboot. Actually Jason Friedberg and Aaron Seltzer, the writer-directors of this movie can be blamed for pushing out mediocre and outright crappy spoof films in the past few years. When done properly, spoof movies offer guilty pleasures such as Airplane! that cleverly satirized the disaster movies.

Meet the Spartans is a take on the ultra-violent (and stylish) movie 300. As the heroic king Leonidas must battle the invading Persians, he is joined by his most elite 13 (instead of 300) Spartans and the Persians bring along Ghost Rider, Rocky, Transformers and even Paris Hilton. Clearly no material was left behind, as an early battle is straight out of You Got Served (and the other dancing-gang movies).

Jokes fall flat almost all the time, and you’ll be glad the movie is only 80 minutes long, as more runtime would be cinematic torture. Still the movie finds time for 2 musical numbers set to I Will Survive, playing on the whole homoerotic vibe of 300 and the Spartans in the original source material.

It looks like their next target is the disaster genre: here’s to hoping that they find better materials and better writers.

Rating: 10%

Teeth is a puzzling movie that doesn’t know what it is supposed to be: it tries to be too many things at the same time and ends up becoming a mess not worth seeing. The topic of "vagina dentata" (basically vagina with teeth) seems to suggest it is a horror movie as this monster lurks beneath and strikes unsuspecting male victims with very graphic castrations. On the other hand, it is also a female empowerment movie as the main character learns to control her teeth down below to punish those who try to take advantage of her, including her stepbrother.

The movie tries to make an environmental point - and blames the "vagina dentata" on a radiation from nearby nuclear power plant. But the problem is the movie doesn’t have a focus and becomes a parade of male mutilations until the end. It tries hard to be a dark comedy, without any comedic payoff, and it becomes increasingly hard to root for a heroine who turns her mutation into a weapon of revenge.

In the end, this movie will be known for its shock value, and the performance of Jess Weixler that won her a special jury prize at Sundance Film Festival in 2007. The problem with shock value is, after the first scene of severed male genitalia with blood pumping out, the rest becomes gratuitous.

Rating: 15%

In celebration of 420 and the upcoming release of its sequel, I re-watched Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, a movie that some critics have called new stoner classic. It is a classic buddy comedy, starring John Cho as Harold, a 2nd gen Korean nerdy investment banker, and Kal Penn as Kumar, a 2nd gen Indian who really doesn’t want to go to med school despite his family’s insistence.

After toking up, they decide what they want is those slider burgers from White Castle and they go searching for the famed and rare burger joints. In the process of getting the burgers, they come across a 2nd gen Korean students meeting/party at Princeton, they wind up meeting Neil Patrick Harris and Harold even goes to jail.

Directed by Danny Leiner, who gave us Dude, Where’s my Car?, he redeems himself as this movie is miles ahead of his previous efforts. Granted there are gross-out humor (such as a painful toilet sequence), cheap humors and wild inconsistencies, but you don’t watch this movie searching for a cinematic masterpiece. The movie is best enjoyed, perhaps, when you’re high as well, but even when you’re not, it is a very enjoyable team-comedy. If it doesn’t teach you any other lesson, you will at least learn that Korean and Indian descent Americans are just like everyone else: sex-crazed, looking for a good high and a good munch.

Rating: 75%

The Mist is pretty formulaic if you drill it down to its core elements. It’s the story of a bunch of diverse characters stuck together in a confined space in order to seek refuge from monsters that want to eat them. What sets it apart from countless mediocre horror movies is the exploration of what happens when people become irrational and start following a fanatic.

David Drayton (played by Thomas Jane) and his son Billy go to the local supermarket after a night of storms in order to gather emergency supplies when thick fog-like mist rolls into town. Soon they discover there’s something in the mist that’s killing people. As a few dozen local folks are stuck inside the supermarket, wondering what’s going on outside and devising ways to escape, two factions are formed: one, led by David, composed of mainly sane people seeking realistic answers, and the other led by local fanatic Mrs. Carmody who convinces people that this is God’s wrath and that everyone is going to die. You do get to see the monsters (such as big tentacles, big bugs and big towering… things), but the real scare comes from what people are capable of doing.

Adapted from Stephen King’s novella, the ending is modified for the movie, actually for the better. The movie is bleak from start to finish, and the revised ending has a Twilight Zone quality to it. Acting is pretty solid, and Marcia Gay Harden plays her role convincingly.

Rating: 70%

Transformers is as big as it gets when it comes to summer blockbusters. Featuring plenty of destructions, explosions and gigantic robots, you can’t help but enjoy the visually and audibly loud action sequences. The movie tells the story of Autobots and Decepticons, two alien opposing factions of robots that can transform who are bent on finding the AllSpark, which gives life to lifeless technological things. Decepticons seek it in order to use it to turn Earth’s technology into robots and take over our world (we actually see the AllSpark in action when it transforms a Nokia cell phone, Xbox 360 and Mountain Dew vending machine into robots).

Caught in the middle is the human race led by Sam Witwicky who ends up purchasing an old beat-up Camaro and discovers it’s actually a robot in disguise. The other subplots (such as the whole Section 7 business, army units…) do not add much to the storyline. But then again you’re not here for a great story. You’re here to watch robots transform, and destroy each other. Transformation sequences are truly a marvel to behold, and definitely not possible without our advanced CGI capabilities. Director Michael Bay knows it and the movie is peppered with up-close shots of cars, airplanes and tanks transform into giant robots.

If all you need from your movie is great action sequences, then Transformers will give you pretty good value for 2 hours. I’m hoping that the sequel (due out next year) will be less about exposition, and more about intense battle sequences.

Rating: 75%

Video-game adaptation on the big screen has never been known for its quality, or commercial success, but for some odd reason studios keep greenlighting them. Latest movie I had the chance to catch was Hitman, based on the Hitman videogames. The movie is pretty faithful to the videogame, featuring Agent 47, a bald uber-assassin employed by the uber-shadowy organization known as Organization that has ties to every government. One day, Agent 47 is tasked to kill the president of Russia, and after the job is done, he somehow turns up alive. Now Agent 47 must fight his own peers and the Russian President’s men to save himself and his new-found female friend.

If you expect the story to make logical sense, you are watching the wrong movie. Agent 47 has a UPC tattooed to the back of his head, making him extremely easy to spot in the crowd. Wouldn’t an assassin want to eliminate that? He is tasked to publicly killing the Russian President so that he could be replaced with a body double. Wouldn’t it make more sense to make the switch private so no one can ever suspect it? Also, why is every other assassin that the Organization sends after Agent 47 so incompetent? If Organization wanted to get rid of whoever kills the Russian President afterwards, shouldn’t they have chosen an easier target?

At least the action sequences are pretty good, and that’s about the only positive aspect of the movie. If you are a die-hard fan of the game franchise and have to see how it looks when you are not in control, go ahead and rent this flick. Everyone else can easily find a better action movie to watch than this mess.

Rating: 35%

First movie of the new year! Produced by J.J. Abrams who gave the world Alias, Lost and is the director for the next Star Trek movie, Cloverfield is the best monster movie America has ever produced. At least 20 times less silly than the American remake of Godzilla, this movie handles destruction of New York City much better. The story is told through the viewpoint of several 20-something youth whose night of celebration and partying is rudely interrupted when an unknown monster starts attacking the city. They must rescue other friends and figure out a way to get out of Manhattan alive in this 90 minute tale.

Monster itself is not scary, and this is not a horror flick at all. What’s horrifying is the shakiness of the camera. Borrowing the camera from Blair Witch Project, the movie pretends to be an actual recording from a handheld camera (perhaps one without any optical stabilization feature) by a terrified citizen. If you can stomach the shaky images, then this movie will reward you with realistic looking footages that completely immerse you in the picture. If you can’t stomach it like me, then your money is better spent on other movies.

Cloverfield is better left as a marketing exercise such as movie trailer that refuses to tell you the title of the movie & shaky camera, than a cinematic masterpiece. It fails to live up to the massive hype (then again, what movie can?) but those who can last through the entire movie will be rewarded with fast-paced monster action.

Rating: 50%