Withholding the zombies, when we know they're out there and what they can and will do if they get you, is scarier than showing constant zombie attacks.

I don't believe in lifetime passes, but The Believer plus Half Nelson is a pretty damn good resume. I forgot he was even in Lars. Was focused on that creepy Real Doll.

She's OK, but I thought the writing of her character was one of the weaker elements. It's not a very demanding role or a stretch for her, except for the dancing part, and who knows how much of that was her?

I fucking love Black Swan. I've seen it twice already. I normally think Natalie Portman can't act, and I have no particular interest in seeing her make out with Mila Kunis (except insofar as it adds to the awesome fucked-upness of the movie). But I love it.

Maybe that's why some people have fainted watching 127 Hours— it's fake, but it's fact-based and more realistic than Hostel 2.

Hence the relative success of Vampires Suck.

No argument that the novels and films get "darker" and "more mature" (as in closer to R-rated) as they progress. What I'm not seeing is the intellectual maturity and "depth" that other critics are seeing. But that certainly is in the eye of the beholder, and yes, I suppose there's a commentary on fascism and some…

I was just gonna post the same thing, Neytiri. Every new adaptation is the "most grownup," "darkest," and so on. I think it's critics trying to legitimize their fandom, but whatever. They have a right to be fanboys/girls, too.

I thought Elah was pretty boring. Giving so much time to Charlize Theron's conflict when Jones' character and his relationship with his dead son were more interesting was a bad choice, but maybe Theron was shooting for another Oscar.

I love The Bourne Supremacy and The Informant!, and I mix them together, which is probably some kind of travesty. I still have no idea why Stephen Soderbergh tacked that soundtrack on a movie set in the '90s that references John Grisham crusaders rather than '60s superspies, but I don't get that movie. I'm just…

Absolute Beginners, mainly but not exclusively the David Bowie parts. The movie was forgettable, but I listened to the cassette for years, till it warped.

Based purely on multiplex experiences, I gotta agree. I saw WALL-E, Toy Story 3 and Despicable Me with full houses. The kids only went crazy over the last one, and it was mainly the scenes with the little yellow minions doing slapstick. The slightly older kids were all going "awwww" over the velvet-painting orphans.…

When I was a kid in NYC, in the late '70s, the subways always seemed to be full of huge posters advertising this play. I spent many boring rides wondering about the title. It has a rhythm that sticks in your head, but…

I fell asleep twice during the second movie, so yeah, skipping this one. But if it has more of a sense of urgency, that can't be bad.

I used to put BWP on while I was grading college papers, to take sadistic enjoyment in the slow psychological torture of these typical slacker undergrad types.

The first was the only movie I've ever seen that scared me way more afterward (when trying to sleep) than during. It's like humans have this internal alarm system that's usually dormant these days, because we don't sleep in caves, and the movie turns it to max sensitivity by encouraging you to listen really hard for…

There's a New Yorker article where some marketing exec says one great aim of Hollywood marketers is to find the one movie of the year that will get Dad up off the couch. This could be that movie.

Our arthouses show NR movies all the time (mostly foreign, some domestic and low-budget). Once the MPAA has weighed in, is the film branded with NC-17 for all time, and is it harder for theaters to show that than an NR, since an NR could be anything ranging from an innocuous nature doc to Irreversible?

The pulling-beating-heart-from-chest scene in Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom gave birth to the PG-13 rating when parents and moralists started complaining.

The incoherence of the trailer is probably reflective of the incoherence of the movie. The electric car thing is being used to establish how fucking cool and mavericky Vaughn's character supposedly is for a fat, middle-aged guy, before we move into the standard sitcom/ hot wife swapping plot.