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.

I think I mentioned how certain great films ruin cinema forever, and it occurs to me that Evil Dead 2 is one such example.  Not that people copied the frenetic style and non-stop gag after gag pace; not even Mr. Sam Raimi could do that.  No, they always copy the stupid parts, and in this case, it was Mr. Raimi’s willingness to admit that The Evil Dead, while pretty good, just needed a quick do-over.  And with the extra fifty bucks some idiot gave him, he may have called it a sequel, but in making it, he just strapped a camera to a 2X4 and remade 1 as the masterpiece we know as 2.   Thus the requel was born.  And no, I’m not sure if anyone has come up with that port-manteau before, and you know I’m not going to check, in case it was copyrighted by the people who are bringing you the remake of Citizen Kane, written, directed and starring Ms. Gwyneth Paltrow, told in chronological order, from one perspective.  And no that isn’t a real thing; I send it thusly into the zeitgeist so that it might become one.  Future you, you’re welcome.  Also, don’t cross the street on October 11, 2035.  Or you’ll get bitten by a zombie Gwenyth Paltrow.

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Last Wednesday, I was attending a seminar on Nietzsche’s short essay ‘Truth and Lies in a Non-Moral Sense’, which was required reading for participation.This was a lucky break for me, since Transformers: Dark Side of the Moon had just come that same day.I was going to have to read it anyway.

The little ditty in question, ‘TALIANMS’, begins quite concisely: ‘Once upon a time, in some out of the way corner of that universe which is dispersed into numberless twinkling solar systems, there was a star upon which clever beasts invented knowing’ (and no it doesn’t say ‘invented autobots and decepticons.‘Nietzsche just wasn’t that prescient), the gag being with a multiplicity of viewpoints and consciousnesses, there is no way to establish which one sees what is real, since that would mean you already knew which one did, AKA: ‘Truths are illusions which we have forgotten are illusions’.The implications of this would be serious if reality was super important, but as someone who has seen every movie ever made can attest, reality is fine and all, but only for making films, which allow me to escape it.

Of course, like all the other jokers before him, as soon as Nietzsche correctly disproves the idea of a ‘true’ reality, he immediately posits his own, which, unlike all the others, is the right one, or simply put, reality doesn’t exist, except for mine, which does.As a fan of action movies, I detest illogic, and hoping to really get into it with the resident Nietzsche guy from Dublin about whether metaphysical realism is purely phenomenological or based on a longing for ontology.

It’s the simple things.

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It was an implicit assumption in writing this that I am better than every other movie critic who ever lived (you, by reading same, have given your tacit agreement to the above statement.Read the fine print).This is not due any intelligence or wit on my part; after all, I was not the one who came up with Death Camp For Cutie, or Sex And The City 2 as the greatest science fiction film ever made.I obviously wish I had, but my brain is not that big.Fortunately for my ego, it is small enough to think that it could have come up with those bits.Nor is my ability to fool myself the reason I am better than then every movie critic who ever lived.I am better than every movie critic that ever lived for the simple fact that I see movies, and critics don’t.

No, I’m not accusing Mr. Roger Ebert of fast-forwarding over the dull parts of Your Highness and giving it a bad review (or fast-forwarding over the dull parts of Meek’s Cutoff and giving it a good review); if I was a movie critic, and I am, this is exactly what I would do if given the opportunity.I can’t tell you the number of times I’ve reached for the imaginary TiVo remote during the part when we hear about how his father was sad, and so he’s sad, or her sister needs forgiveness so she has to kill that robot.I imagine the people behind me, especially those in the UK, are especially confused by the man making the ‘be-boop, be-boop, be-boop’ (to be read aloud in increasing pitch) sound.For those of you in our lovely third-world country who have never experienced the joy of TiVo, I will explain: if you hear a strange man in the theater gesturing at the screen and loudly be-booping, it means: ‘shut up, and shoot the robot’.You may also want to call the police.

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