Angel Eyes (2001) brought in $24M in box office against a $38M budget. It stars Jennifer Lopez as a two digit IQ Chicago cop with a chip on her shoulder, mostly over the fact that her family has never forgiven her for having her father arrested for beating her mother. She saves an accident victim at the beginning of the film, who turns out to be the same odd person she has a relationship with later. It was at the very start that this film lost me. Lopez was supposed to be a seasoned cop, and a hard case besides, yet she arrives on the scene of a traffic accident and becomes nearly hysterical (or was it just overacting?). It is supposed to be a surprise to us that the guy who she starts seeing in the same guy she saved, but who has blocked the entire incident from his mind, but they telegraph every plot twist long before it happens, thus building dramatic tension.

Lopez and and co-star James Caviel have a well lit, but mostly unrevealing outdoor sex scene, where you can see the side of one breast. The photography is good, but my favorite review of the film is the short version of Berardinelli, "Sloppy and Sappy." Someone needs to tell whoever is in charge of make-up to go easy on eyes and lips for close-ups, but do cover the acne scars. Ebert, for some reason, liked it at 3 stars, and IMDB readers say 5.5/10. I say C-.

• J-Lo (not nude) (1, 2)

Hell up in Harlem is one of those 1970's blaxploitation pix, but not a very good one.

• Margaret Avery (1, 2, 3)

Words.

What do you think is the most frequently mispronounced word in the English language? I used to argue that it must be "mauve". In my entire life, and that's not such a short time, I have never heard it pronounced correctly. Not even once. The only reason I know how to pronounce it is because I was getting irritated by all the variations I heard, so I looked it up when I was in college. It rhymes with "grove". Now that you know that, if you want to win some bar bets, you'd have a pretty good chance at being the only person in the bar who can pronounce it.

In the past five years, however, it has come to my attention that I may have set the criterion wrong. Sure, "mauve" is mispronounced 100% of the time, but it really isn't a word you are going to hear frequently unless you watch fashion shows. Have you ever had any occasion to use this word? Few people do. So it is the mispronunciation percentage winner, but probably not the word you are most likely to hear mispronounced. To put in in baseball terms, it bats 1.000, but doesn't get enough at bats to qualify for the batting crown. It seems to me that I am really looking for the "total hits" leader.

I'm now suggesting that the champion ought to be "heinous". It seems that every time I turn on the TV, I hear somebody try to use this word, and usually with hilarious results. The correct pronunciation is "HAY-niss" (long "a" in English, long "e" in the other major European languages) and, if my memory is correct, it was pronounced correctly by Bill and Ted in their movies, although they had their own expanded definition of the word.  (It means "gravely wicked" or "evil").

The current championship for the most misused word must belong to "notoriety". Recent interviewees seem to think that it is something they want to achieve. For the record, it means "the state of being widely and unfavorably known". In other words, if you have achieved notoriety, you are famous, and almost universally despised. Osama bin Laden is someone who has achieved notoriety, as did Hitler and John Dillinger. This is probably not something you wish to achieve from your sports career.

Charlie's French Cinema Nudity Site is updated.

The only downside...the target audience seems to be single dudes under 30 working in coffee shops. So older guys, or 25-30 year olds with real jobs and/or families probably wont relate. But hey...if your a 27 year old unpublished writer with 14 bucks in your pocket wanting to seek out slices of life to use for your great American novel...I know you'll like this show.