Does anyone remember in Mystery Men, near the end, when Ben Stiller leaps off the staircase (carrying Claire Forlani), and you can hear that "ch-ch-ch" sound effect you heard whenever Steve Austin and Jamie Summers would leap or run? I saw the movie in the theater, and to this day, I can't believe I was the only one…

Of all the movies Streep did in the early-to-mid-80's - though admittedly, I haven't seen FRENCH LIEUTENANT'S WOMAN - this one holds up the best. It almost never feels forced, and both the relationship part of the movie and the message part are portrayed equally well.

I'm not sure I'd call Hiaasen a "mystery" writer per se - after all, we usually find out a few pages in who the bad guy is, even if the main character doesn't, and generally speaking, it doesn't take them too long to figure out either (most of the novel is them trying to prove the bad guy did it). And while I love…

To prove there's one in every room;

I think the fourth movie would have been better - marginally so, to be sure - if Maggie Q had played the main villain instead of Olyphant. I like him as an actor, but playing a supervillain isn't one of his strong points (or, to be fair, something he looks interested in). She, on the other hand, kicked ass.

"though director Sidney Lumet…chooses not to press the superheroic aspect of his protagonist."

On an Oscar-related website, one commenter wrote Carol Reed was nothing more than a mediocre director, or words to that effect.Yeah, Odd Man Out, The Stars Look Down, The Fallen Idol, The Third Man, Night Train to Munich, The Man Between and Our Man in Havana were all real "mediocre".

Yes, yes, a thousand times yes.

I guess it is my loss, then. I've watched it twice, and while I appreciate Soderbergh was trying to do something different (and not copy The Insider, which he said in interviews was his favorite "serious" version of this type of movie), and liked the fact he cast so much of the movie against type, I've never been able…

I was in a comic book store once, and they had some bootleg DVDs for sale. Among them was a copy of THE NIGHT THAT PANICKED AMERICA, a made-for-TV movie that was both a fictionalized account of both Orson Welles' "War of the Worlds" broadcast and how people reacted to what they thought was really happening. I was low…

H.E.A.L.T.H occasionally shows up on Fox Movie Channel. As for THE DEVILS, unfortunately, the Powers That Be at Warners have apparently decided not now, not ever on that one. It was going to be put on iTunes a few years ago, but they blocked it. There are some decent bootleg versions out there, though.

I forget if it was in the U.S. or Canada, but there was a station that used to show Moment by Moment a lot over a decade ago, usually in the morning. I've never seen the whole thing, but I've seen most of it. It's more dull than anything else. I mean, it's not good, but we're not talking At Long Last Love, Can't Stop…

The DVD is out of print (unless you have $90), but you can watch it on-line at Amazon. And yeah, such a great movie.

"Writer-director Richard LaGravenese is more accustomed to scripting glossy prestige romances…"

His 70's work is interesting, but not quite up to the level of his best work. Premonition and Welcome to L.A. both play like films that have good ideas but don't know how to develop them yet. The latter especially feels thin and superficial when compared to Choose Me or Trouble in Mind (or Love at Large, which I agree…

Well, at least Dominic West is moving on to bigger and better things with this upcoming Richard Burton/Elizabeth Taylor biopic he's doing.

Maybe I should watch it as a parody, then. There were about 20-25 minutes in the film where it looked like it was going to be a sexier, raunchier version of The Thomas Crown Affair (Michael Douglas knows Sharon Stone is guilty but wants her anyway), it played well on that level, and if they had continued on that level…

Strange, but the first song that I thought of with this topic? "Goodbye Stranger" by Supertramp.

It's nowhere near as bad as its reputation suggested, though I do think it's a little too self-satisfied to really work.

I agree with you about the book - Linson is a sharp writer - but not about the movie, which I thought was very tame. I found it especially disappointing because Barry Levinson and De Niro had already delivered a sharp skewering of Hollywood in WAG THE DOG, but here, it seemed like they were very hesitant with the…