Missed film opportunities of 2007

Brace yourself for the second annual installment of an ongoing (so far) series profiling twisted movie titles.

by John P. Meyer

Let's talk missed film opportunities.

I'm not referring to the movies I - or you - missed seeing this year, even though at first glance there seems to be a pattern involved in the ones I managed to avoid: we're talking films such as 2 Days in Paris; 4: Rise of the Silver Surfer; Saw IV; Hostel: Part II; Resident Evil 3; and assorted other films with numbers in their titles.

It's not like I have a psychic aversion to numerical film titles: I was quite happy to view and review 300, 1408, 28 Weeks Later and 30 Days of Night, for instance. (Although I did suffer a brief bout of hysterical blindness after seeing that last one, now that I think on it...)

Here's the thing, though: I'm not concerned about the film viewing opportunities we squandered in 2007 (so many films, so little time); rather, I'm making it my mission to shine a klieg light once again on the film making opportunities that were overlooked by those big money boys in their cushy director's chairs, all for want of a little imagination (and a big brass complement of cojones). I'm talking about movies like:

* Spider-Man 3:10 to Yuma: Mayhem ensues as Spidey is bitten by a radioactive tarantula and finds himself transported to an old west border town where his spandex duds attract the wrong kind of attention

* Eagle vs. Teenage Mutant Ninja Shark: Two words - shark wins

* I Think I Love My Ratatouille with No Reservations: Catherine Zeta-Jones stars as a top chef whose secret inter-species affair is exposed when her furry pink-tailed paramour tumbles into a soufflé au chocolat

* Lady Chatterley's Hot Fuzz: (Not submitted to the MPAA Classification and Rating Board)

* Hairspray, 28 Weeks Later: Cross-dressing zombies can be destroyed only by the liberal application of Alberto V05

* Away From Her Blades of Glory, Bitch!: The Tonya Harding Story: After an abortive attempt to hammer Nancy Kerrigan's shapely knees into pulp, Tonya dispatches Jeff Gillooly and her other white trash minions to steal Kerrigan's golden skates. Nancy fights back the only way she knows how: triple toe loops to the jugular.

* Live Free or Die Hard, Sicko: Bruce Willis lays down the Patriot Act law to Michael Moore on the eve of his new documentary, "Why America Sucks"

* Into the Wild Shadow of the Moon: Buzz Aldren strikes out on a solitary quest to explore the lunar surface and eventually finds himself in a deserted bus on the moon's dark side, where he discovers a taste for classic Pink Floyd

* Lust, Caution, Romance and Cigarettes: More than a wish-list, it's a tragic love story about Chinese dissidents using musical comedy to advance their big tobacco cause. (Warning: the Emperor General has determined that smoking on the Great Wall may be hazardous to your health. Because you'll be shot.)

* Michael Clayton's Balls of Fury: George Clooney's character goes on a crazy-mad raging-bull rampage when he discovers that the rose dust he's been using on his blooms has rendered him a blank-shooter

* No Country for Old Transformers: Optimus Prime hangs up his weapons platform for good when Megatron unleashes a pneumatic killing device

* Elizabeth: The Golden Age of Grindhouse: Cate Blanchett stars as a struggling young actress who's lured into the sordid world of skin flick cinema by an unscrupulous agent who bears a striking resemblance to Bob Dylan. (Directed by Paul Verhoeven.)

* Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Perfect Holiday: Alvin and the boys go on a yuletide expedition into the deep woods and encounter a group of survivalist cub scouts who bite off no more than they can chew. Tagline: tastes like chicken

* There Will Be Blood. P.S. I Love You: A schizophrenic tale of on-again, off-again Irish bar fighting, in which Hilary Swank disguises herself as a scrappy lad to get in on the jaw-rattling action

* The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Sweeney Todd: Johnny Depp puts a nice clean part in Brad Pitt's hair - using a pair of ornately engraved Smith & Wessons (which he refers to as "my little friends")

* 300 Wild Hogs: Kenneth Branagh re-imagines the epic legend of the Spartans at Thermopylae by transporting the tale to modern times and envisioning the heroes as a biker gang. Their massed-horde nemesis: Veiled Iranian soccer moms in SUVs.

* The Bourne Nanny's Diaries: Prequel to the espionage action trilogy documents the babyhood of Jason Bourne through the scribblings of his British nanny, who discovers (through the agency of a teddy bear cam) that the plucky youth can escape, Houdini-like, from the swaddling clothes in which she attempts to restrain him

* Things We Lost in the Saw IV: "Only one finger left... only one finger left..."