A Boy and His Dog.

The Names of Love was sold out? Wow. That played for exactly one week at one theater in my state. Not long enough for anyone to figure out it contained politics and/or nudity.

I'd heard about the rape scene but never saw it till today. Wow, that was … slow. As lovable '80s soap opera rapists go, I prefer Adam Carrington on Dynasty. (It wasn't his fault he was messed up! He was stolen as a baby and raised in the middle class! And his dad was a lovable rapist, too! Who made it OK by sending…

A lot of people seemed to like the narration in Vicki Cristina Barcelona. I am not one of them. Narration tends to work best if (a) the narrator is a character in the story, à la Sunset Boulevard or (b) the narration is funny, mocking the conceit of an authoritative off-screen person telling us what to think.

There were some 3-D blood spatters as well. But I agree. The 3-D was useless at best, and I hope those dark interiors look better in the flat version.

I saw Flatliners multiple times in theaters because I had nothing to do that summer and a mercifully brief Kevin Bacon fixation, but I never much liked it. I had time, however, to appreciate the premise and think it needed a creepier, less flashy execution. Less Joel Schumacher and more of an old-fashioned scary-movie…

I was confused about Walt's motives in this scene.

It's not identifying with the killer or torturer that reduces stress, in my experience. It's identifying with the victims, which these films (the best ones) generally force you to do, even as you know what's coming. It gives you the same adrenaline rush as getting on a terrifying amusement park ride that eventually…

Freida Pinto's "performance" in that film consists of standing around looking pretty and occasionally concerned, so I don't think she could have impaired it by watching the earlier films.

That sounds about right, but I would say C+. And the plus for the performances alone.

When did they start putting major spoilers in trailers? I think the Harrison Ford thriller What Lies Beneath was the first instance where people complained of this. Then the film's marketers told the press their research had revealed that women, the film's primary target audience, had no problem with spoilers and even…

The Wire is an ensemble drama with hundreds of characters and multiple storylines. Hard to compare.

I'm not sure why, but I think Skyler is more of a "natural criminal" than Walt, for all her self-righteousness. Maybe it's the con artistry she displayed with the locksmith, or the fact that her sister is (or was) a kleptomaniac. She seems like the sort of person who has intense family loyalty (when she betrayed Walt,…

Case in Point
After The Tree of Life, my friend demanded to know why I hadn't warned her she should get stoned before this movie. I reminded her I'd sent her the link to Mike D'Angelo's Cannes write-up, which tells you pretty much exactly what to expect. She hadn't read it because she was afraid of spoilers.

I watched Beginners. It was a very soft movie; in some scenes you could hear another film (Transformers, I'm guessing) across the hall of our shitty theater. The audience was composed of old people, who glared at me for crumpling a candy wrapper and complained at the end that they didn't understand a word out of…

Whereas The Holiday, I'm sorry to say, has nothing to do with Holiday.

What cracks me up is that I was really embarrassed by my love for Raiders of the Lost Ark/Harrison Ford when I was 13. Living in hicksville, before the Internet, I didn't know a single kid who liked anything but hunting, drinking and soccer (that goes for both boys and girls). When Blade Runner came out, I never…

What Evan is saying is why most romantic comedies aren't "comedies" at all. I have to watch a lot of them, and they always try to pander to the audience by presenting the heroine as good-hearted and put-upon by all the wacky characters around her. Usually her greatest flaw is that she "cares too much for others" and…

The secret is that the secret is lame enough not to be worth withholding, or divulging for that matter. I liked the acting and the 1979 nostalgia ('cause I'm old) but was seriously underwhelmed by the movie as a thriller or SF. In terms of disappointment where one had hoped for horror or wonder, it was almost up there…

Her intuition seemed to return in her handling of the Belko interrogation. Best scene in a while.