Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle

Stoner or not, this is a fun movie. Granted it helps if you are, since pot humor is the foundation of the film. Still, it's pretty awesome. Take all the three movies these guys have done, throw in some Cheech and Chong, roll it into a nice spliff and you've got this movie: a wonderfully high time. Harold (Cho) and Kumar (Penn) are college grads trying not to live up to the typical racial stereotypes. Kumar seems to be doing a better job by purposely screwing up all his med school interviews while Harold slaves away at extra work at his investment banking job. Add in his horrible one way romance with Maria from down the hall and you can see why he needs a little loosening up. The two friends toke up and the adventure begins as they go on a quest for the ultimate munchie: White Castle burgers. What follows is a crazy journey, filled with insanely comic situations, some pretty awesome cameos (Neil Patrick Harris is amazing), two funky stoned sequences and a few good jabs at Princeton. The film is better than you'd except for a standard stoner comedy. The actors are pretty good, the situations are funny and you have a good time watching and laughing out loud with the rest of the audience. What more can you ask for, besides some delicious White Castle? -- Chris Bellis

Riding Giants

Riding Giants is a documentary about surfers, directed by skateboarding maven Stacy Peralta. It provides an interesting glimpse into the heyday of surfing in the fifties and early sixties. This film is decidedly uneven and lacks personality. It straddles the line between tongue-in-cheek and poignant, biography and documentary. The first half of the movie chronicles the progress of surfing culture in southern California and Hawaii during the 1950s and 1960s. To its detriment, however, it does not continue this examination of "the surfing life" in later decades and in other locales. Also vexing is the glaring absence of female input in this movie. All that said, in spite of its flaws, it is not a horrible film by any means. Riding Giants does not lack action, and it should be a hit for anyone who is a fan of water sports or extreme sports in general.

-- Carrie Greene

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