Last year, Four Lions received praise as a daring, cutting edge satire of the terrorist boogeymen we’ve been trained to fear over the course of the past decade. The praise is more than deserved, but I couldn’t help but wonder how it would have been received if had been made and released in 2002, instead of 2010. Would the critics still have been able to find the humor in it, while the wounds of 9/11 were still so fresh?
Given the reception Ernst Lubitsch’s masterpiece, To Be or Not to Be, received upon its release, the answer is, “Probably not.” A satiric farce set in Nazi-occupied Poland, the film was made while WWII raged on and the public was still only becoming aware of the unimaginable horrors perpetuated by Hitler’s evil regime. The film was met with outrage, as critics and audiences were unprepared and unwilling to see the terrifying enemy they were fighting overseas portrayed as blithering buffoons in silly uniforms. Twenty-three years later, Hogan’s Heroes would start a six-season run on network television. Time heals everything.
The film pairs TV legend Jack Benny (in what would be his defining film role) with the gorgeous Carole Lombard (who tragically died in a plane crash three months before its release) as Joseph and Maria Tura, Warsaw’s most beloved theatrical couple, whose company is forced to shut down following the Nazi invasion. Maria’s pre-invasion flirtation with a handsome Polish airman (Robert Stack) leads to their troupe using their acting skills to prevent a Nazi double agent from revealing the locations of the families of Poland’s exiled air force to the S.S.
Viewed today, To Be or Not to Be is less transgressively outrageous as it is outrageously funny. Made by a master in his prime, it is required viewing for anyone who considers themselves a student of film comedy, and remains as fresh and relevant as anything you can expect to see in a theater today. —Allan Mott
Universal monsters screenwriter Curt Siodmak monkeyed around on his typewriter to go ape with 
No sooner has the future Perry Mason married the not-bereaving widow when he begins turning into a gorilla, through a series of cheap and unconvincing transformation sequences. Your average killing rampage ensues. My mind was long checked out by then. —Rod Lott
As expected, Jackie Chan is hardly in 
Once they flee on horseback, Black Fox reveals they’ve been recruited to help her infiltrate an evil warlord’s chemical weapons plant. In a booby-trapped forest, they encounter the usual dangers — nets, spikes, sword-wielding skeletons — and are soon captured, but are allowed to go free when they beat their enemies at their own games — namely archery, blindfolded balloon shooting and noodle-eating.
The story (with apologies to the word “story”) has Gooding brokenhearted after his girlfriend (Vivica A. Fox) dumps him when he barfs on her cleavage and proposes marriage. To cheer him up, his ultra-horny janitor pal Sanz convinces him to accompany him on a cruise to engage in lots of promiscuous sex with loose women. But unbeknownst to them, a vengeful travel agent (Will Ferrell, whose cameo is the film’s only saving grace, outside of Victoria Silvstedt’s purple panties) books them on an all-male, all-gay ship. Let the homophobia ensue!
I’ll admit I harbored strong reservations about Beyond; the fact that it was shot in Spain, set in a prison, scripted by a first-timer and had no principals return except Combs combined to portend an idea whose time had long passed. Plus, director Brian Yuzna’s spotty filmography —