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.

You see a movie like À Bout portant (Point Blank) and the first thing you want to do is start ruining it for other people.This is the way of pleasure for movie critics, that if you don’t have the Schadenfreude of tearing down a movie with the unlucky, unlucky, Kate Hudson, you are left withexplaining why you liked a good film, which risks indulging your Kapitalherrschaftfreude, roughly translated here as ‘joy in creating other people’s displeasure over knowing things about the ending’.You want to talk about the cool things that you liked, but the Verlangengewissheitfruede is strong, and it usually leaks out.One critic thought it would be smart to explain that Inglorious Basterds ‘cleverly rewrites history’.Thanks, jerk, mock gratitude that I must extend to myself for repeating it.But even the more subtle suggestions can be damaging: the fact that we knew that there was a ‘big surprise’ in The Crying Game led us all to guess that the late 1980s Irish Revolutionary Army had severe financial difficulties which would lead to internal power struggles (you could tell by the guy’s adams apple). (more…)