This Ticket limits our liability. Read It.

 By reading the enclosed, Reader (hereby referred to as Reader) agrees to imdemnify Batman (hereby referred to as Writer) from the following:

 Resolved: that these are not movie reviews, and therefore Writer reserves all rights to spoil every plot turn, line of dialog, and gratuitous Matthew McConaughey casting that he sees fit, not only with the movie in question, but with any movie he has seen, heard about it, or simply made up, even if Reader really, really was going to see that one, but couldn't figure out how the Netflix queue works.

 Resolved: that these are not reviews, Reader will not hold Writer responsible if Writer does not convey if a movie is Good (hereby defined as Good) or Bad (hereby also defined as Good). This is largely because Writer isn't sure either.

It is a strange phenomenon indeed that we pay our hard earned money to cinemas to make us tense for a few hours, only to relieve that tension.  The explanation for this is like buying a lottery ticket; there’s a chance, however slim that may be in this year of 2011, that the relief will stay with you for a while, that it will resonate in the form of mood, sort of like a drug that makes you feel like crap, but with a fantastic hangover.  When I walked out of Beginners, for example, I was cheerful, and the mood stayed with me.  Hello, inexplicable traffic jam!  Thank you for giving me time to consider how wonderful my life is!  And thank you for slowing me down: you can’t be too careful these days!  But it’s not entirely like a lottery either, because when you pick and scratch, the worst case scenario is nothing.  If you lose, no one reaches across the counter and hits you in the face.  Even so, such a scenario would be infinitely preferable to the psychic equivalent of having seen Cowboys and Aliens, the worst film so far in the worst year so far (and that includes Green Hornet, the parts I was awake for that is).  Walking out, I wanted to kill everyone.  All right, fine, more than usual.  Get out my way, crippled orphan!  I don’t actually need to be anywhere right now, but I need to be there right now.  Oh now you want to hold the door open for me?  How dare you?

Suddenly I was in that frame of mind where everything in the world is someone else’s fault.  Reflecting upon it, as I bum-rushed an old lady to catch the train, I thought about the combination of the deeply unsympathetic characters and a line that recurs twice: ‘It’s not your fault’.  This was anathema to me: it was your fault (the crazy one talking out loud at your cinema, that’s me, by the way).  You’re an asshole.  You acted like an asshole, and something bad happened.  And, having no idea if this applies to the characters, the filmmakers or both, I plunged forward.  You want to be psychoanalyzed?  Then we’re going to delve into that guilt, or more specifically, the idea that you don’t deserve it.  My diagnosis?  This is a film is made by,  and so about, and is somehow turning me into one of a growing number of sociopaths.  That may seem like a personal attack – to say that you lack the capacity to feel compassion for others, see yourself as the center of the universe and yet remain miraculously free of responsibility for your own actions – but my interest is purely therapeutic.   The label ‘sociopath’ is not meant to hurt your feelings; it’s meant to hurt your feelings the way a therapist would. (more…)

Once upon a time, I tried to make a movie about kid’s show host named Dr. Scientist who would explain How Wars Work.  It was great, because 1) it never got finished, so I never had to prove that it was, and 2) I played Dr. Scientist.  I remember there was a scene that took place in Amoeba Records between fans of Alicia Keys and Jets from Brazil (it was 2005, when these bands existed and people bought records) who went to war with one another over their taste in music.  The point being that things that we like inexplicably provoke often extreme reactions in the negative, as if the existence of Dave Matthews and anyone who likes him means that the music you like is just music you like, instead of the greatest music ever recorded.  How could something that makes you so happy not be true?  Dr. Scientist was trying explain religious wars from this perspective, and though he effectively solved the Pakistani/India conflicts, ended the war on Terror, and managed to unite North and South Korea, he was still unable to explain the existence of Dave Matthews, who is just terrible, and invalidates all the music I like.

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