Echoes of Fight Club.  It is in no way surprising plotwise, but it was still an original take on an old story.

This film seems to try being Full Metal Jacket for the Gulf War.  It was better than I had expected, but I don't know that anyone without a Y chromosome will care for it.

The writing in this show is so taut that it is difficult to imagine how it could even be improved.  If it weren't for the facts that the powers that be at Fox are idiots (Exhibit A: Bill O'Reilly) and that Battlestar Galactica is still on the air, then this would be the best show on television.  Instead, it's the best canceled show on dvd.

What if all your memories were recorded in life and were only accessible upon your death?  It's an interesting premise that is under-explored because the film spends too much time trying to be moody and divides itself between two minor storylines that are overshadowed in their significance by the larger issues of this technology.

I hadn't seen this in years, but it was time for a revisit.  I'll swim against the current of current opinion and say it *should* have been a classic.  I think the music and art-direction aren't up to what they should have been, but I'm not going to go into a lengthy critique here.  The density of the film weighs it down (e.g., too many minor characters, cluttered sets, etc), so it takes several viewings to access everything.  In other words, it was too full of ideas instead of appropriately stocked with a few *good* ideas.  They threw a lot into it, none of it very good.  Everything about it is mediocre except the basic concept, so it's inevitable that you walk away feeling you should have enjoyed it more than you should have.

The writing on this show is starting to come into its own by this time in the revamped series.  The tongue-in-cheek style of the original series has given way to a faster-paced and wittier dialogue that is more in step with what modern audiences (i.e., I!) want to see.

Goddamned end-of-the-season cliffhangers!  I'll give them credit though, they know how to keep these plot twists coming.

If I could sum up this picture in one word, it would be CRINGE.  Unlike one of these movies about people with talent where they make you believe in the performers through the use of careful editing and the judicious use of body doubles (think Flashdance), these no-talent kids look like exactly that.  I wanted to crawl up into a ball on the floor, and it wasn't to do a backspin.

Real-life tard Johnny Knoxville plays a guy pretending to be a tard in order to win the Special Olympics.  If this sounds as retarded as it actually is, then you're as confused as I am as to why I even bothered with this predictable throwback to '80s comedies that can presently only be found re-run in the wee hours of the morning on the USA network.

I guess it would help if I really remembered the first one (The recap at the beginning of this one didn't jog my memory much), but this was exactly what you would expect, then you'll forget it five minutes later.  Rent Blade III instead.

I just took a chance on this one when I saw it at the library.  I turned out to be an interesting take on the Beowulf story.  It follows the original story very closely, but there are lots of modern touches where they have embelished the plot to give you insight into who this Grendel character is anyway and why's he so pissed.  There are interesting bits they've added to the dialogue as well.  I won't ruin it for you because you're either going to rent this or I'm going to cut your right arm off and hang it in my mead hall.

It tried to be a comedy, but that wasn't what I was laughing at.  This dated sci-fi junk is hilarious in ways that were never intended to be funny.

I was first introduced to Catherine Keener years ago watching Walking and Talking on the Sundance channel.  Close to a decade later, Keener has re-teamed with the same director (Nicole Holofcener) to make another light comedy with enough though-provoking material to distract me from the irritating presence of Jennifer Aniston.

Wow.  I didn't expect this to be all that good.  Okay, this is not Million Dollar Baby.  This movie blows that one away.  The material should have been a cut and paste formula picture, but this was great.  I'd call it a knock-out, but you'd be right to hit me.

I knew what I was in for.  I mean, I had seen Terence Malick's other movies, so I knew it was going to be a meandering journey.  It is, but it's an interesting one.

I hate to admit this, but I would just as soon skip depressing historical pictures.  Sure, these stories need to be told, but I don't like being depressed that William Wallace was disemboweled or that Anne Frank spent her truncated childhood in an attic before dying of typhus in a concentration camp.  The tragic story of the life of a geisha is minor by comparison, but... still.  Even told well and couched in beautiful aesthetics (as is the case here), it still leaves me depressed.*
*I make an exception for Brokeback Mountain because that was just fucking beautiful.

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