And I'm fine with settling into "dumb action movie," which it was, but it was nominated for Best Picture! If the Academy wants to nominate ultraviolent movies with subversive social messages, Paul Verhoeven has several to choose from and they're all better than District 9.

We actually watched this in about fourth grade, and I remember thinking to myself "is this appropriate for us?" during the violent sword battle.

Great interview and he does seem like a really nice, self-aware guy. But I've long felt like his Dr. Chilton is BY FAR the weakest element of Silence of the Lambs. It's just so histrionic and over-the-top. The only other person I've ever read who shares that sentiment is Mike Nelson of MST3K fame.

Resurrection is horrible. Nothing works at all, from the over-the-top gore effects to the hacky "quirky crew of bandits" to the awful dialogue (which Joss Whedon, in an intensely Whedon-esque move, blames on the actors "saying the lines wrong").

I get somewhat baffled by some of the enduring nerd-love for Blomkamp. I really enjoyed Alive in Joburg…it was a great concept, the practical effects were really wonderful (particularly the hooded aliens), and genuinely disturbing. The alien begging for water was really affecting. But I found District 9 almost…

Ravage and Laserbeak, the cassette-pets of Soundwave from the old Transformers cartoon. Very low maintenance, as they never seem to need food, water, or any other meaningful care, and they fit snugly in your chest to be called upon when needed. On a walk in the park late at night, and somebody tries to rob you? "Sure,…

The only way the film makes any sense is if parallel universes are being created, because the original conceit — that Gyllenhall can try and find a bomb on a train by entering a dead man's memories — doesn't add up. In order for that to work, the dead man would have had to have known where the bomb was located, which…

Neither Looper nor Source Code made any damn sense. The whole premise of Source Code is that technology has been developed to allow someone to jump into the memories of a dead person, which is a fine sci-fi concept and all, but its application makes no sense. If you're jumping into someone's memory, then your world is…

Another: Harold Bloom, who in 1979 attempted to write a sequel to David Lindsay's "A Voyage to Arcturus." It was called "The Flight to Lucifer," and Bloom disowned it and never wrote fiction again.

It's a weird trend. I have two friends that have had books published by big houses that did pretty well, and both of them continue to work 9-5 jobs and are just happy that they've made it. It disgusts me that people like Gould are chosen to represent the profession.

The mention of the writer paid a massive advance for her memoirs is Emily Gould. Her essay from this book recently appeared on Longreads, and she essentially complains that even though she received a huge advance, she spent her money poorly and only supplemented her income by teaching yoga classes in Brooklyn. This…

Eh, I dunno. I like Russell, but American Hustle was hailed before release as this wacky, non-stop comedy romp, and I found it sort of overlong and messy and occasionally pretty boring. There's a pretty entertaining movie there if you excise about 20 minutes, but I was disappointed.

Everyone is correct: Crash is so insufferable because it's simply an exercise in white liberals patting themselves on the back for being so NOT racist, you guys. Then again, so is A.A. Dowd's first entry in this article. Irony is fun!

Hey, slightly off-topic here, but is that whole "delayed" second annual Parameter short film contest officially dead?

A bad review? McG, do you have anything to say to this prick?!?

Not at all. It is hilarious, and hopefully its reputation will rise over the next few years. For my money it nailed 80's action movie tropes even more effectively than "Team America."

The Descendants had absolutely nothing to say. I haven't read the book, but the film made no attempt to create any sort of thematic connection between the main story of Clooney's wife and his attempts to keep the family land. And whenever there seemed to be a looming moment of actual emotional resonance (Judy Greer in…

I used to work downtown, and while watching the pilot I was really amused by how little they had to do to make the whole Five Points area look hellish. That big red building visible at about 2:02 is sort of infamous downtown…it's a complete derelict, and reputedly is so full of asbestos that no developer will touch…

I really came here specifically to see if the comments might somehow go unscathed from a hacky Deliverance joke, but here we are.

Hmm, that's an interesting take. The line just comes off a little awkwardly.