People don’t like to watch movies with me. It’s not because I have bad taste in movies or because I smell really bad. It’s because I ask too many questions. I can’t help it. I just want to know what’s going on, to find the truth, get answers. Therefore, it is a miracle that I liked Doubt, a movie based on the Pulitzer-winning play of the same name, in which no answers are ever provided — not at the beginning, not in the middle, and not even at the end.

What’s the point of a movie that doesn’t give answers? In the end, at least, I like to know who’s good, who’s bad, and who’s just ugly. But Doubt isn’t about finding answers. In fact, it’s about just the opposite. Yup, you guessed it — it’s about having doubt.

“Every one one of us is hurtling towards death,”theater director Caden Cotard (Philip Seymour Hoffman) rapturously announces to a room full of hushed actors sitting with blank stares and crossed arms, beginning the grand experimental project that will become, in more ways than one, his life’s work. It’s as close to a punchline as we get in Charlie Kauffman’s directorial debut, Synecdoche, New York.

Slumdog Millionaire is a riotous, colorful fairy tale of epic proportions, filmed with the greatest of tenderness in the dirtiest districts of Mumbai. The film opens to the big bass and bumpin’ beat of M.I.A. following the escape of neighborhood kids from the police. Sure, the cops are grown men on motorcycles, but the kids clearly have the upper-hand of it—running through the ins and outs of the neighborhood, they lure the cops into their own territory. Slumdog Millionaire is filmed with such casual intimacy that you can smell the garbage, taste the spices, touch the purple and gold silk drying between rooftops. It’s a tale worthy of the epic poets, about a boy growing up and his fated love for the girl of his dreams.

The Truman Show was a movie with a great premise: film a reality show about a man who lives his life as if he were a normal everyday person, unaware his world is a set and his intimate details primetime entertainment. Although a wonderful send up of Hollywood and artistry gone wrong, one thing prevented The Truman Show from scaring the viewer as much as it might have. After a point, the suspension of disbelief was left in the theatre as we sighed in relief, and said: “But someone would blow the whistle. That could never happen. Not really. Not to a person.”

In the film Twilight, during an especially intense scene, Edward Cullen (Robert Pattinson) tells the girl he loves, Bella Swan (Kristen Stewart), “You’re like a drug … like my own personal brand of heroin.” For many fans under the age of 20, his words could just as easily describe Twilight itself. The film’s emotional grip (not to mention Edward Cullen’s dreamy good looks) makes it impossible not to experience at least one instance of increased heart rate.

Comedies can be either predictable or completely unpredictable. The quality of a comedy is normally unaffected by whichever of these two options the movie employs, although a gut-bustingly hilarious comedy usually requires a few curveballs. Still, people routinely pay large sums and flock to theaters in droves to see Adam Sandler, Will Ferrell or the Farrelly brothers’ films, with Easy-Bake formula plots involving a combination of idiot and fish-out-of-water tropes. If the jokes work and the leads are appealing, the laughs still generate.

Diego Luna asks at the beginning of Mister Lonely, “Have you ever wanted to be someone else?” This question is the introduction to a magical film, composed almost completely of a surreal, bizarre metaphor about the loneliness of everyday life. The movie is, ostensibly, about the romance between a Micahel Jackson impersonator (Diego Luna) and a woman who lives as Marilyn Monroe (Samantha Morton.) It speaks as well, however, about the masks that all people wear and the lies they try to escape. Mister Lonely is a film that is literary in its aspirations: mostly devoid of plot, it’s interested instead in the relationships and trials of people who are all lost, lonely, and falling in and out of love.

What do 12-step programs and Jesus Christ’s foreskin have to do with each other? Victor Mancini, apparently. In Choke, Mancini, played by Sam Rockwell, is a (barely) recovering sex addict who works as a tour guide for a re-enactment of colonial America. His mother, Ida (Anjelica Huston) is rapidly deteriorating within a mental hospital and, in order to pay for her care, Victor grifts patrons at restaurants by pretending to choke on his food. He defends his actions by claiming to inject a sense of purpose into the patrons’ otherwise empty lives — he turns ordinary people into saviors and heroes.

This will be brief: Righteous Kill sucks. Despite having two very strong actors attached to the film, it is one of the most generic, lackluster, stale and boring films that I have ever seen — and I have seen a lot of films. If you want to see a really good cop/crime drama, go see Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight again, or Michael Mann’s excellent Heat (which also has Al Pacino and Robert DeNiro, giving far better performances) or Joe Carnahan’s Narc (with Ray Liotta and Jason Patric). Moral of the story? Skip Righteous Kill. Its not even worth a DC++ download.

From: Ted Hamilton

To: Mr. Coen

cc: Mr. Coen

Subject: Your new “film”

Dear Sirs,

My name is Ted Hamilton, and I recently saw your new movie, Burn After Reading. Before we discuss reimbursement for my ticket, I would like to raise a few points.

First: An A-list cast does not a fine film make. Sure, you’ve got Clooney and Pitt, but this isn’t Ocean’s Fourteen. John Malkovich, Frances McDormand and a host of other recognizables don’t help. You can’t save a sinking ship.