Fleeing to an nation overtly hostile to your homeland to avoid detainment may be the best thing for Edward Snowden, but it's the worst thing for Wikileaks and its ilk.  Both he and Julian Assange deny being criminals, yet they act like criminals - escaping the justice system instead of standing by their actions.

I'm willing to offer a prayer for Chronicle and Paranormal Activity, even if they perpetuated this current trend of baleful imitators.

Before his name became synonymous with ephebophilia, rape and general bastardy, Polanski was most famous for a horror film featuring maternal themes, so I think the comparison is pretty self-explanatory.

If you've been eating nothing but shit all year, a mouldy cheese sandwich would probably be a welcome relief, but that doesn't make it objectively tasty.

Scotland would only be the best country for forty-five seconds, before we all realised that we don't even have enough money to keep RBS afloat.

Alternatively, since every letter in his name is considered sacrosanct and forbidden from being reused on pain of death, the most popular name in Turkmenistan is "Xzfjpqst".

It's official.  Gurbanguly Berdimuhamedow can't have children.

Also, writing in iambic pentameter and sprinkling "thous" all over the place isn't Shakespeare: it's just Elizabethan drama.  Shakespeare is about the language, which I don't think "This hand, which now encas'd in blackness is" is really going to live up to.

@avclub-ad45e11f2e88b8963920c79cd1d8755e:disqus Superior firepower effectively removes numerical advantage, especially when the enemy has no firepower at all.

Quantum of Solace is too dumb to be accepted at face value and too pretentious to be enjoyed as an action romp.

The one thing that irritated me about the book was how ineffective heavy artillery was against zombies compared to a simple gunshot to the head.

Hollywood exploiting '2012' anxiety with characteristic timeliness.

A view that runs contrary to a generally positive critical consensus is not invalid, just as a film that received mostly positive reviews is not immune to criticism.  Moreover, a critical consensus is not set in stone, but is rather an evolving process that can dramatically alter in hindsight.

Well,,,yeah?

Bear in mind, the nerd community lapped up the aforementioned Sucker Punch (which was more a TV Tropes parade than an actual film).

Iron Man 2 was dismal; it barely limped past 50 on Metacritic.  Super 8 is perhaps a more subjective case, but the argument that it cynically exploited Spielbergian tropes can be made, if not - in your view - convincingly.

@avclub-23de85a2fdcee0bffe9a3256081b9db9:disqus

Actually, the joke is that any mention of "Welcome to Earf!" immediately results in overwrought, self-righteous screeds about racism and white privilege, much to the amusement of the original poster.

I would pay top dollar for thirty minutes of an increasingly dejected Yasmine Pahlavi compulsively phoning the Iranian Embassy over and over again to see if the revolution had started yet.

You even captured the French tradition of anti-Semitism.