I was too lazy to see ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO when it played the Big Screen. Ennui saved me a terrible waste of money.

El Mariachi (Antonio Banderas) is recruited by CIA agent Sands (Johnny Depp) to foil the coup being plotted by drug cartel boss Barillo (Willem Dafoe) and corrupt General Marquez (Gerardo Vigil) against the Mexican El Presidente (Pedro Armendariz, Jr.).

Perhaps 5% of the dialogue is in Spanish, the rest English. If the subtitles on my copy of the DVD were "turned on", English text translated the former and, most annoyingly, English text accompanied the latter. Well, duh!

The assassination of a Mexican President would seem to have all the dramatic story potential as a murder of the president of Iceland or Chad - perhaps less. It's no surprise, therefore, that this element of the storyline takes a distant back seat to the real conflict of the story, which is between El Mariachi and Marquez, who, at some point in the past, killed the former's wife (Salma Hayek) and daughter. El Mariachi is a tormented man out to get even.

This film is endlessly and casually violent, and the final body count must lie somewhere between the twentieth century battles of Verdun and Stalingrad.

The only compensation for sitting through this mess is the occasional appearance of the gorgeous Selma Hayek, and the quirky persona given the Sands character by Depp. Among other things, Sands orders carnitas wherever he goes. At one point, after eating a version of the dish so much superior to all others he's tasted to date, he casually kills the chef so, as he puts it, "balance is restored".

To be fair, ONCE UPON A TIME IN MEXICO is a sequel to EL MARIACHI (1992) and DESPERADO (1995). Perhaps I would better understand this last in the series if were to see the first two. Frankly, I'd rather stick hot needles in my eyes.

At the end of my review of the previous book in the Stephanie Plum series, HIGH FIVE, I wondered if author Janet Evanovich was on the verge of trying too hard with her plotting. Then, of course, there was thread left dangling on the last page. Whose name, Morelli's or Ranger's, did Stephanie pull out of the bowl in her Night of Passion Lottery? In HOT SIX, it seems to me that Evanovich is indeed pushing it. And it turns out that Joe Morelli is the one that got lucky.

Plum is a bounty hunter in Trenton, NJ, employed by Vincent Plum Bail Bonds, the owner being her scummy cousin, Vinnie. Stephanie's modus operandi is either Keystone Cops or Bull-In-China-Shop, depending on her mood and the amount of junk snacks that she's consumed. The fact that she ultimately succeeds is based purely on dogged persistence and good fortune.

The skeleton of the HOT SIX plot is that Vinnie tasks Plum with apprehending Ranger, his best bond enforcement agent and Stephanie's friend and frequent mentor. Ranger has skipped bail on a ridiculous concealed weapon charge - everyone carries in Trenton - and it doesn't help that the local cops want to question him about the recent murder of a crime kingpin's son. Plum wants no part of it, least of all because she hasn't the skill to nab the ex-Special Forces soldier. But, as the bodies pile up, bagging Ranger becomes the least of her worries.

Don't get me wrong. HOT SIX is as funny as any previous book in the series. It's just that Janet's imagination has, in my opinion, finally gone over the top in populating the storyline with weird characters and dropping her heroine into bizarre situations. It's gotten to the point where less wackiness may be better. It's fine that her feisty Grandma Mazur, reminiscent of Sophia (Estelle Getty) of American TV's GOLDEN GIRLS sitcom, must move in with her, but not necessary that the former take driving lessons, date the ancient geezer upstairs, or purchase a red Corvette. It's not unusual that Stephanie apprehends a couple of oddball fugitives over the course of the book, but not required that one of them here be costumed as Captain Kirk at a Trekkies gathering during the takedown. And not surprisingly, Stephanie is followed by a couple of goons who also have an interest in finding Ranger. But does one of them really have to be a Pakistani emigre who, back in the old country, used to beat unruly children working in the village rug factory? What has before simply seemed to be Plum's bad karma is now too heavy a concentration of weird to be believed.

Finally, the reactions of Stephanie's mother to her antics - she say's "Why me?" and makes the sign of the cross a lot- are getting old. And Stephanie's long-suffering Dad continues to be a virtual cipher. It's time both characters were fleshed out.

At least Stephanie is making progress in her love life. Is that a proposal of marriage coming from Morelli at the book's end? You think? After finishing this review, I'm off to purchase SEVEN UP.

In HIGH FIVE, the fifth in the Stephanie Plum series by Janet Evanovich, Stephanie hits a new high in dysfunctionality when it comes to men.

Plum is a klutzy bond enforcement agent, i.e. bounty hunter, working for bail bondsman and sleazy cousin, Vinnie, in Trenton, NJ. In this book, Stephanie's official assignment takes back seat to a family request to find Uncle Fred, who's disappeared. But what's with the photos Uncle Mabel found in Fred's desk of a plastic garbage bag containing a dismembered body? Photography wasn't Fred's hobby.

In HIGH FIVE, Plum is beset with Briggs, Bunchy, Ramirez, Morelli, and Ranger. And that's just for starters. Briggs is a midget that becomes Plum's unwelcome houseguest after the latter's zeal for fugitive apprehension results in an unfortunate incident. The mysterious Bunchy also wants to find Fred, and is following Stephanie around. Ramirez, a psycho rapist that Plum helped put away in book one, is now back on the streets and wants revenge.

But the real core of the novel is Stephanie's lack of a sex life - a condition that's now reaching the critical stage. Plum has prurient yearnings for Joe Morelli, a distant relative and Trenton undercover cop - that is, when she's not hating his guts for being totally exasperating in the way males often are. After all, twelve years ago he did take her virginity behind the eclair counter of the pastry shop in which she was working. Then there's Ranger, the Cuban-American, bounty hunter extraordinaire who's Stephanie's sometime mentor and now, to her distraction, the occasional stud muffin of her fevered dreams. Our heroine has a yen for Bad Boys, and both Morelli and Ranger can be that, especially when they dress in black.

As one would expect in a continuing series, the author must ratchet up the wackiness of Stephanie's life a notch with each succeeding volume. Through the first five books, she's managed to do this without stretching my credulity beyond the breaking point. Plum is just one of those girls with excruciatingly bad karma. I'm beginning to anticipate, though, a plot where Evanovich tries too hard. We'll see, because I intend to read all of the series - 5 more installments as of this review.

At the conclusion of HIGH FIVE, Stephanie succumbs to the need for a night of lovin', writes the names of Morelli and Ranger on separate pieces of paper, mixes them in a bowl, closes her eyes and picks one, summons the winner after showing his name to her pet hamster Rex, puts on a killer-sexy black dress, and waits for her man of the night to arrive. The reader won't know who got lucky until it's revealed in the prologue of HOT SIX. Rex and I know, but we're not telling.

If a Stephanie Plum book was to be made into a film, Sandra Bullock would be absolutely perfect in the title role.

Set 2 of THE SANDBAGGERS series is perhaps a cut above Set 1 - therefore, 4.5 stars.

We rejoin the career of Neil Burnside (Roy Marsden), the lonely, driven, insubordinate and brilliant Director of Operations for Britain's Secret Intelligence Service (MI6). Neil's fiefdom is small but crucial. He controls the "Sandbaggers", a select group of agents, no more than two or three, who are always on call to race to global points of crisis in MI6's struggle with the KGB and set thing aright. And sometimes they fail. However, this British television miniseries, which aired in 1978 and 1980, is not so much about Burnside's war with foreign adversaries as with those in London - his own boss, SIS Deputy Chief Peele (Jerome Willis), and the craven politicians in Whitehall and Number 10 Downing Street.

Of the six episodes in the set, perhaps the best is "At All Costs", wherein one of Neil's two Sandbaggers is caught in an espionage sting in Bulgaria, wounded by gunfire, and now lying alone, bleeding, and paralyzed in a Sophia safe house. For all his faults, Burnside is 100% committed to the safety of his agents. So now, in company with his last remaining Sandbagger, the Director takes the dangerous course, much to the keen displeasure of Peele and the Foreign and Commonwealth Office, of going behind the Iron Curtain to Bulgaria's capital to get his man out.

I consider the least deserving episode is "It Couldn't Happen Here", which perhaps reflects the British scriptwriters' overly dramatic and sensationalistic view of America's penchant for guns and political assassination. In any case, Neil's CIA London colleague, Jeff Ross (Bob Sherman), who is usually quite level-headed, now comes across as a wild-eyed conspiracy theorist with the FBI as the Machiavellian villains. And U.S. senators drop like flies. To me, the episode was over the top.

In the last episode, "Operation Kingmaker", the MI6 Director General ("C", Richard Vernon) is forced into retirement with health problems. While considering his own career prospects and the fate of his department, Neil must now conspire to back the least unpalatable of two possible successors to C's chair. And no matter who gets the Prime Minister's nod, it's going to be dodgy going for Burnside in Set 3.

Marsden's Burnside is one of the most intriguing protagonists in recent memory. Undeniably wily and capable, he's also cold, ruthless and conniving. He's definitely the man you'd want running special operations for your government's foreign intelligence service, especially if you're the agent at the sharp end, but not a snake you'd want slithering through the grass at your garden party.

THE SANDBAGGERS is first rate entertainment. I look forward to viewing Set 3, the last, but shall be saddened when it's over.

BACKTRACK is unbelievably dopey. Its only redeeming factor is that Jodie Foster shows an eye-popping amount of flesh - and it's no body double. And what a great set of legs! That's why I'm awarding two stars, one for each gam, which just goes to show the sophistication level of the film (AND my review of it).

Anne Benton (Foster) is a "conceptual artist", which means, in the wacky Southern California milieu in which she has her gallery, she creates pieces using message board displays. You know, those where one line of illuminated text moves right to left across a long and narrow screen. Anyway, one night after experiencing a flat tire on the freeway, she witnesses a mob hit on the premises of an oil refinery. (For those LA viewers, it's the one just off the 405 south of LAX where the freeway curves to the east above Palos Verdes.) Like a good citizen, she goes to the police, who realize that they have in Benton a valuable witness against organized crime, and specifically against Big Boss Mr. Avoca (Vincent Price). But after her apartment is invaded and her boyfriend (a quickly expendable Charlie Sheen) shot to death, Anne realizes neither the cops nor the Feds can protect her, so she flees town and establishes a new identity and career. To hunt her down, mob goodfella Leo Carelli (Joe Pesci) hires the saxophone-playing assassin Milo (Dennis Hopper), who tracks her across the West using computer databases. The thing is, he begins to obsess about Anne after finding photos of her (un)dressed in dominatrix accessories. Milo has issues.

The plot has a Keystone Cops quality as law enforcement seeks to retrieve Benton by following Milo. And after the latter severs communication with his employers in favor of his own agenda of infatuation, Leo's thugs go after Milo and Anne by following the cops. Even then, the storyline might've been redeemable if it hadn't taken such a Bonnie and Clyde twist, and the conclusion (at that same refinery) is positively ludicrous.

Hopper as Milo is almost the caricature of a mob hit man. Where did he get those clothes, that hat, and that accent? And speaking of accents, Leo's lawyer John Luponi (Dean Stockwell) has to be one of the most over-acted roles in recent memory. If it didn't get a Razzie Award, it should've.

Perhaps even the cast realized what a disaster BACKTRACK is. Joe Pesci, whose role is not insignificant, isn't even listed on the ending credits. I wonder if he tried to buy up all the prints?

A dedicated Jodie fan will perhaps wax rhapsodic over her nude shower scene. Beyond that, don't bother.

The 1970 film PATTON opens with U.S. Army brass touring the Kasserine Pass battlefield in Tunisia shortly after the Yanks' stinging defeat at the hands of Rommel's Afrika Korps. In the next scene, General George Patton (George C. Scott) dramatically arrives at the headquarters of the II Corps to take command and turn things around for the Allies at the Battle of El Guettar. For those Americans whose only knowledge of the Western theater of WWII encompasses D-Day and its aftermath, and perhaps the battle for Italy, these cinematic images represent perhaps the total sum of acquaintance with the North African campaign. Yet, it's not until page 401 of AN ARMY AT DAWN that Patton takes over II Corps. There's so much more.

This book by Rick Atkinson is an extensively researched (29 pages of closely spaced sources) and engagingly written popular history of America's North African campaign in 1942-43. It begins, naturally, with the American and British amphibious landings of Operation Torch to capture Casablanca, Oran and Algiers, followed by the defeat of the Vichy French in Morocco and Algeria, and the bloody and stumbling but ultimately victorious confrontation with the Germans and Italians in Tunisia. AN ARMY AT DAWN is often not a pretty picture of Eisenhower's first outing as Supreme Commander or the U.S. Army's proficiency at large-scale land warfare, the latter not exercised since WWI. Indeed, as Rick Atkinson puts it, after defeating the fumbling French:

"... as (the Americans) wheeled around to the east and pulled out their Michelin maps of Tunisia, they believed they had actually been to war." What a rude awakening the next few months were to be! But the Tunisian anvil forged the mettle of the WWII commanders that U.S. mythology now holds in high esteem: Eisenhower, Patton, Clark, and Bradley.

AN ARMY AT DAWN has thirty-two pages of photos, plus well-drawn and extremely helpful maps of the various major battles, generally described from the perspective of battalion, regiment and brigade.

Atkinson's book is inclusive of so much more than combat narrative. For example, the reader follows with interest the genesis of the Special Relationship now enjoyed by America and Britain, which luckily survived at its infancy the scorn between Anglophobes Bradley, Patton and Clark and contemptuous Brits such as Montgomery and Alexander. And squabbling occurred even further up the command ladder. After a lengthy description of the Casablanca Conference attended by Roosevelt and Churchill and the top war councils of each, the author describes the concluding press conference held in the lush garden of a borrowed villa at which Roosevelt smoothly announced:

"The chiefs of staff have been in intimate touch. They have lived in the same hotel. Each man has become a definite personal friend of his opposite number on the other side." To which statement the author appends the tongue-in-cheek comment:

"The chiefs stared impassively from their foliage redoubts."

AN ARMY AT DAWN is a must read for any casual student of WWII. This is billed as "volume one of the liberation trilogy", and I look forward to the following two.

Oh, and as for Patton's depiction in the 1970 film, Atkinson's account confirms that George really did rush from his II Corps command post to fire his pearl-handled revolvers at strafing German aircraft.

LOUDER THAN BOMBS won some sort of award several years back at the Slamdance Film Festival in Park City, Utah, and I can't imagine why.

A young Pole, Marcin (Rafal Mackowiak), has just lost his father, whose funeral service and banquet he must now organize. Concurrently, he must cope with the declaration by his girlfriend, Kaska (Sylwia Juszczak), that she's relocating to Chicago, a move endorsed by her parents, especially her mother, who want her to get out of their dismal industrial town in southern Poland to find a better life and spousal prospect than Marcin, a school-dropout, auto mechanic. To the funeral come Kaska's parents and Marcin's aunt and uncle with their son Dzefrej (pronounced "Jeffrey", Krzysztof Czeczot) and his girlfriend Jagoda (Magdalena Schejbal).

The conflict in the plot is, of course, primarily between Marcin and Kaska. The former now faces being alone for the first time in his life - his mother died years before - and he's desperate for Kaska to stay and become his wife. Even if he persuades her, because they do love each other, they must then oppose her parents. In contrast, Jagoda has definitely fallen out of love with Dzefrej, and these two spend most their time together bickering with gusto.

I perceive so many things wrong with this film. While, there may be chemistry between Marcin and Kaska, they generated little with me. Even worse, Jagoda and Dzefrej are two of the most decidedly unlikable and obnoxious screen characters without actually being villains required by the storyline. The cinematography is of poor quality and unrelentingly somber, certainly not helped by the bleakness of the urban surroundings. (I would've gratefully given two stars had the production team used blossoming Warsaw or lovely Krakow as the locale.)

Trying too hard to find meaning in this film, I suggest that Marcin's new-found and uneasy independence might be a metaphor for Poland's release from Cold War Soviet domination, and, further, that his desire for a formalized relationship with Kaska might metaphorically represent the nation's desire for an alliance with the United States and NATO. In this age of political correctness, the Slamdance Film Festival was perhaps tossing the re-emerging Polish film industry a generous scrap of fraternal encouragement. But, please, to say anything positive about LOUDER THAN BOMBS verges on patronization. By the end of the DVD, I was facedown in my bowl of bigos, passed-out from sheer boredom.

You may have seen the famous Norman Rockwell painting, "Freedom from Want", which depicts the idealized American family gathered around the quintessential Thanksgiving table as the turkey is presented for carving. PIECES OF APRIL it's not.

April Burns (Katie Holmes) lives in a New York City apartment with her boyfriend Bobby (Derek Luke), and the film opens as the two begin to prepare Thanksgiving dinner for the rest of April's family, which is driving in from out of town for the ordeal.

Joy Burns (Patricia Clarkson) is dying of the metastatic cancer that has already cost her both her breasts, a surgical transformation suitably documented in the family photo album. She expects this Thanksgiving to be a disaster since daughter April was a more into drugs than Home Ec. Indeed, to say she and April are estranged is an understatement. But husband Jim (Oliver Platt) persuades her, so off they go in the station wagon with their other children, daughter Beth (Alison Pill) and son Timmy (John Gallagher), and Joy's senile mother Dottie (Alice Drummond) for what may well be Joy's last Thanksgiving.

In the meantime, as Bobby goes out on a mysterious errand, April is faced with a non-functional oven, which forces her to desperately beg the other tenants in the building for the necessary range time to cook the traditional bird. Time is running short, and the rest of the clan is getting closer despite frequent stops for Joy to vomit from the nausea induced by her chemotherapy. And it also appears that the family doesn't know that April lives in a decrepit tenement in a graffiti-decorated slum, nor that Bobby is Black. The Burns festive occasion promises to make your dysfunctional Turkey Day look like a Martha Stewart showcase event in comparison.

Clarkson was deservedly nominated for, but didn't receive, an Oscar for this performance in a supporting role. She's more the "star" of PIECES OF APRIL than the ostensible lead, Holmes. The Bobby, Beth and Timmy characters are almost an unnecessary distraction. More interesting are April's neighbors which give her help, or not, especially the very strange Wayne (Sean Hayes) and the middle-age Afro-American couple, Evette (Lillias White) and Eugene (Isiah Whitlock). There's an especially good scene involving Evette's initial reaction to April when the latter first appears seeking help for her culinary crisis.

The movie's abrupt conclusion after eighty-one minutes leaves much to be desired. One wonders if the scriptwriter ran out of ideas or the producers out of money. But there's still enough there to make the film more than worth the cost of the rental. And, next Thanksgiving with the relatives, perhaps you won't take those mashed potatoes for granted.

THE VICAR OF DIBLEY series must be seen if for no other reason than for the delightful eccentricity of its characters. It played on the British telly from 1994-2000.

As the first episode opens, the aged male vicar of the St. Barnabus Anglican church in the small, rural, village of Dibley dies during Sunday service. The parish council, chaired by the sensible and straight-laced landed gent David Horton (Gary Waldhorn), requests a new vicar from the local bishop. Much to the council's surprise, who should be assigned but the Rev. Geraldine Grainger (Dawn French). On her arrival by cab in the midst of a rainstorm, Geraldine, a young, single, full-figured woman, stuns Horton by saying, "I'll bet you weren't expecting a woman. Or someone with these" - while gesturing to her ample bosom.

Thus, Grainger invades the Dibley community. And, as Horton later - much later after many differences of opinion - admits, she's the best vicar the parish has ever had.

The strength of the series is in the supporting roles. There's squire Horton, of course, driven to frequent bemusement and exasperation by Geraldine and his council members. These include his own dim-witted son, Hugo (James Fleet), who's in love with the mentally challenged parish verger, Alice Tinker (Emma Chambers), who has the intellectual capacity of a brick. Then, there's Jim Trott (Trevor Peacock), who has the nervous habit of prefacing any statement with "No, no ... no, no, no." (During one episode, the viewer is introduced to Mrs. Trott, whose foible is the opposite: "Yes, yes ... yes, yes, yes". But she's never seen again.) There's Frank Pickle (John Bluthal), the council secretary who records the minutes in infuriatingly compulsive detail, and Owen Nesbitt (Roger Lloyd Pack), the profane and blunt-speaking farmer who develops a lust for Geraldine. Finally, there's Letitia Cropley (Liz Smith), killed off in the 1996 Easter special, who has a penchant for experimenting with the most bizarre food recipes, which she trys out on her hapless council colleagues.

Filmed in the quaint hamlet of Turville, just off the M40 about 20 miles west from its junction with the M25 Ring, THE VICAR OF DIBLEY is consistently amusing. For me, the funniest episodes were: "The Easter Bunny" (disc 2), wherein each member of the parish council must decide what to give up for Lent, which, for Geraldine is chocolate; "The Christmas Lunch Incident" (disc 2), wherein Geraldine bites off more than she can chew, literally, by rashly accepting several Christmas lunch invitations; "Autumn" (disc 3), wherein Geraldine is seduced and abandoned by David Horton's hunky brother Simon. And, there are a couple of celebrity guests in brief appearances: Sarah Ferguson, the Duchess of York, and Johnny Depp. You know, the Duchess is a Babe.

I can't award five stars because there are a couple of clunker episodes. But, on the whole, THE VICAR OF DIBLEY is top drawer British comedy, and certainly superior to the ubiquitous garbage sitcoms on American TV nowadays.

What's a girl to do when handcuffed to her own refrigerator?

For those readers unacquainted with Stephanie Plum, she's a skip tracer, i.e. bounty hunter, working for her cousin Vinnie in Trenton, NJ. She's also a disaster magnet. So, when her latest assignment, Maxine Nowicki, who jumped bail after being charged with the theft of her estranged boyfriend's car, handcuffs Plum to the door of her own fridge, what's left to do while awaiting rescue but finish off the leftover banana cream pie, a jar of peanut butter, and a bag of baby carrots? And that's before her car explodes, her apartment is gutted by fire, and she gets raw egg in her hair.

As I work my way sequentially through the Stephanie Plum series, I stand amazed at the imagination of author Janet Evanovich that continually ups the ante on the absurdity of the situations in which Stephanie finds herself and the eccentricity of the characters that gravitate to our heroine like lint to a black dress. Yet, the craziness never seems pushed or over the top, but is just Stephanie's karma in a nutty world.

The continuing "male lead" in all of Plum's adventures is Joe Morelli, the rascally plain-clothes Trenton cop with whom Stephanie has a long love-hate relationship. When they were just pre-pubescent kids, the sexually precocious Joe lured Stephanie into his father's garage to play choo-choo. As teenagers, Plum ran down Morelli with the family Buick after Joe relieved Stephanie of her virginity on the floor behind the eclair counter in the pastry shop in which she worked. Yet, when Plum and her pet hamster Rex are left homeless after their apartment is torched in FOUR TO SCORE, it's the extra room in Joe's house into which Stephanie moves. Will she and Joe find True Love before they kill each other?

Like its predecessors in the series, this book is exceeded in trashiness perhaps only by a lurid bodice-ripper. But, should you pick up a Stephanie Plum adventure, I virtually guarantee you a good time.