- Enrique Serna's novel about mexican perpetual president/dictador Antonio Lopez de Santa Anna, "El Seductor de la Patria (The Nation's Seductor)". Hilarious, cynical and tragic in equal measure.

I know. Crazy, huh?

"Goodfellas" on junior high Civics class. It was meant to illustrate law and crime issues. I hadn't seen it before and was hooked from the first scene. Forget the school context: I was floored that a movie as brazen and intense as this one could exist.
Sadly, my classmates were a jaded bunch to watch that movie with:…

I concede that VanDerWerff at least admitted, if ambigously, to loving that ending. But then again, he IS a genius. Don't know what anyone else's reasons could be.

Sorry for being crass, but here goes: I can't believe no one had the balls to go with the ending to "The Sopranos", the only perfect ending for a TV series I have seen.

I guess you are right, @avclub-3cd3d7a52c5f271f86f15c9ac99676f3:disqus . We're given no sign that Landa will back up on his word, yet it wouldn't be surprising if he did. And even if he didn't, maybe some other Nazi commander would kill them later for having aided the Dreyfusses, making their sacrifice tragically…

Sweeney Todd was so good I sensed Burton had reached his peak and wouldn't deliver another fully satisfying film for a long while but I didn't care.

True, a much more discreet part in my opinion (even if it has more screen time and dialogue lines).

Not at all. None of the farmer's daughters are killed, only Shoshanna's family.
I think she's the oldest of the sisters. She's the one that closes the door as they're leaving and gives her father a knowing look. Also, she's the only one of the three to get her own closeup.

Don't forget Lea Seydoux's role as one of the LaPadite sisters in "Inglourious Basterds". It might have been brief, but it just wouldn't be the same movie without it.

That got me thinking: maybe parts of this movie work better without a big audience, when the viewer has more space to sit back and contemplate what the movie is going for. That might account for why the movie wasn't a hit when it came out. It found its audience much later.

Interesting. I saw it on my own, left to my own reactions. I don´t think I´d have found it funny if I'd seen it with other people, but who knows? To me it was beautiful and devastating.
I'm also curious: where they/you still laughing when it was over?

Incidentally, Quentin Tarantino claimed a few years back that he was working on a 20-page mega review of this film. And the world awaits still.

68 comments so far and no one has brought up Matt Zoller Seitz´ essays, without which no discussion of ´Superman Returns´ is complete. Allow me to correct that.