This. He can't be more articulate when describing his act because there's basically nothing to describe. It's like if Will Ferrell took his George W. Bush on the road and only performed as that character for the rest of his career. There's nothing there except a funny voice and a one-note repertoire of jokes.

Reason #26 why I will never switch to Netflix's streaming-only plan: The only version of "Oldboy" they have on Instant has shitty dubbed dialogue.

Yeah, it's hilarious how Ben Affleck's scientist for some reason knows staff-fighting and karate. Obviously shoehorned in just to get some Woo action in the movie.

Re: 80s horror films — "The Fly" holds up pretty well too. My pick is still "The Thing," though.

I'm really hoping that the film adaptation is better than the book. I could see what the author was trying to accomplish, but Kevin was such an unmitigated psychopath that I wished the author had just gone full-on "Bad Seed" with the storytelling. The lugubrious faux-Atwood narration just got to be too much by the…

Finished season 1 of Mad Men. My opinion of it has definitely improved over the back half of the season, though I'm not sure I'll continue watching it faithfully. Watching a show where every character (except maybe for Peggy and Betty) is more or less despicable mostly just depresses me. Don's nostalgia speech knocked…

Are "Umberto D" and "Grave of the Fireflies" actually message art, though? I mean, they definitely have an ideological perspective and aim to affect you strongly, but that's not necessarily the same thing as a straight-up bit of propaganda like, say, Upton Sinclair's "The Jungle."

I think one of the reasons that book is so great is that it's not entirely clear whether Vonnegut's "So it goes" is meant to be ironic or sincere. I'm of the mind that he meant it sincerely — that, when confronted with such senseless slaughter and depravity, no rational, constructive response is possible. Really,…

I dunno, the movie had some creepy moments, but it was so utterly, incoherently batshit that it was impossible to tell what, exactly, was at stake. The meta twist at the end also felt a little unearned. And Sam Neill's lead performance is awful. Basically, if you want a Lovecraftian Carpenter movie you should just…

Eh, I still don't buy it. If they could make The Fellowship of the Ring into a single movie—which had to introduce a completely new world, all of the characters, and explain the backstory of the Ring—they could do the same with The Hobbit. The only reason they're splitting it up is because they need the extra time to…

Usually when people say "Spielbergian" they're thinking of 70s/80s Spielberg. So: lens flares, precocious kids, droll humor, and middle-class white people.

Screw Hellboy, I still want my adaptation of "At the Mountains of Madness." I shed a tear the day that project fell through.

This. In any case, The Hobbit was doomed the minute they chose to split it into two movies. That decision makes absolutely no sense.

Gary Oldman in The Professional.

That woman is the worst. I might hate her even more than Finchy. Finchy's a nightmare, but he's so obnoxious and offensive that it's easy to imagine him being shunned in a group of decent people. The pregnant woman, on the other hand, is sanctimonious and utterly self-absorbed, but you can't tell off a person like…

"Even the most miserable life in existence has a moment or two of joy
mixed in there, and the frequent cultural fetishization of misery as
somehow more “authentic” than joy is just as false as, say, one of those
old musicals where everybody’s so happy they’re singing all of the
time."

Your perfect manly-men movie involves tucking your junk between your legs and serial killing?

Yeah, "Rashomon" won the Best Foreign Film Oscar that year, if I remember correctly.

THE KUROSAWA RATING THREAD!

Same here. The horseback chase and spear fight about halfway through are tremendous, but overall there's too little Mifune and too much bumbling peasant/annoying princess.