Shut up.

I don’t care that your boyfriend is dating a skank. It doesn’t matter to me - or anyone else in the theater, I dare assume - home many babies she’s had, or by how many different men. If I was interested in that little drama, I’d turn on Springer. But I didn’t. I came here to watch Hulk smash.

Also, for the love of all things Holy, close your mouth when you chew.

The Incredible Hulk - 30 Second Review

Ed Norton: learns how to meditate.

William Hurt: is a jerk.

Liv Tyler: can’t act.

Tim Roth: mutates.

Abomination: angers Banner.

Hulk: smash.

The Incredible Hulk - Slightly More Than 30 Second Review

Spoilers abound, tread ye carefully.

Nostalgia drops by for another visit.

Terminator 3 did not happen.

Thomas is pleased with this.

The War with the Machines is raging. Finally.

John Connor is a post-apocolyptic prophet. Or is he? (Of course he is. Spoiler!)

Marcus is a poor man’s Arnold.

Moon Bloodgood is an awesome name.

The Post Apocalyptic Rape Gang is pretty much mandatory, I guess.

Marcus SMASH!</hulk>

Thomas had to think about the HTML code for that </hulk>.

Kyle Reese is a punk teenager.

Loud Mechanical Groaning Screeches are bloody terrifying.

An Off Switch That Can Be Triggered By Broadcasting Anything on a Certain Frequency is a really stupid idea.

An Off Switch That Can Be Triggered By Broadcasting Anything on a Certain Frequency is a really cunning ploy.

Digital Arnold is back!

Thomas kermitflail!

SkyNet has some nice digs.

Thomas thinks he’s been in that building…

Thomas adds new software requirement: “don’t accidentally create SkyNet.”

The Future is not set.

Spoilers abound, tread ye carefully.

James T. Kirk is a troubled youth prone to emotional outbursts and acts of rebellion.

Spock is a troubled youth prone to emotional outbursts and acts of rebellion.

Thomas senses an Epic Bromance in the looming.

Uhura is fly.

Thomas really did just write that.

Bones, Scotty, Sulu, and Checkov are spot on.

Sulu has a freaking expandable sword in his backpack.

Thomas wants a freaking expandable sword.

When Your Only Tool is a hammer.

Every Problem looks like a nail.

Nero’s Only Tool is a planetary-scale strip mining machine.

Nero’s Every Problem looks like a geological disaster of unprecedented proportions.

Transporters, Phasers, and Communicators are still awesome.

The USS Enterprise still makes me want to be an astronaut when I grow up.

Time Travel allows J.J. Abrams to make a sequel, a prequel, and a reboot, all in one movie. And it makes sense. And it’s awesome.

Leonard Nimoy does the greatest voiceovers ever.

Space is still the Final Frontier.

Wolverine and Sabertooth: fight in literally every American war ever. Despite being Canadian.

Deadpool: is an uber-sarcastic mercenary with katanas. This is going to be awesome.

Deadpool: disappears for the next 85 minutes.

Sabertooth: likes the killing a bit too much.

Wolverine: peaces out.

Many Many People: get stabbed.

Wolverine’s Girlfriend: also gets stabbed.

Wolverine: So, about that metal skeleton…

Wolverine: OW OW OW OW OW WHY GOD OH WHY OW

Many Many Other People: get stabbed.

Wolverine’s Girlfriend: Surprise! I’m not dead! But I was lying about being in love with you! Except I really wasn’t!

Wolverine: buys that.

Deadpool: is back. His mouth is sewn shut. The Merc with the Mouth’s mouth was sewn shut. Because:

The Script Writer: is an idiot.

Many Many Other Other People: also get stabbed.

The Movie: mercifully ends.

James Bond: drives like a maniac.

James Bond: is still a Parkour champion.

Woman Sitting Across The Aisle From Thomas: shares her disbelief with the entire theater.

Thomas: will cut you if you don’t shut up.

Random Hot(ish) Girl: goes back to see the guy that tried to kill her.

Thomas: facepalm

James Bond: drives a boat like a maniac.

The Vast Global Conspiracy: is vast, global, and conspiratorial.

Hot Chick From the Home Office: waits a respectable five minutes and twenty seconds before sleeping with James Bond.

A Bunch Of Things: happen.

Thomas: is confused.

Thomas: is bored.

Thomas: is daydreaming about User Interface Design.^*

The Bad Guys: are defeated?

James Bond’s Dead Lover’s Evil Fake Boyfriend: is caught.

Bond, James Bond: is never said.

Shaken, Not Stirred: is never said, either.

Jason Bourne: does it better.

^*Seriously. About an hour and something into this, I realized that my brain had gone on a little vacation, and was thinking about the cool stuff I can do with the JavaFX library.

I was disappointed.

Not by the movie, which I thought was a reasonably faithful translation of the source novel, which is also to say it was a trashy teen vampire romance that I have no business liking and can’t get enough of. No, I was disappointed by the fangirls.

For weeks, I’ve been reading about people from whom Twilight may as well be Holy Writ, people lining up days in advance to get thirty seconds of the actors’ time, people who literally scratch their necks so that they are bleeding^* when they get to Robert Pattinson,the poor fool duped into playing Edward, the sparkly, no-fang-having, vegetarian vampire.^**

So I was sort of hoping for a train wreck. Instead, I got a reasonably well-behaved crowd, and a reasonably well-crafted movie.

Let me share a little secret, folks. It’s a lot harder to be funny when I’m not angry. But I’m sure going to try. Here we go: the Twilight recap:

Fangirls: Excited twitter.

The Screen: Twilight Logo!

Fangirls: Squee!

Thomas: Hopes someone passes out from sparklepire glee.

In the run up to Iron Man, some of the more science-minded members of the media have commented that we do not currently have the technology to power the suit Tony Stark created; drilling a hole through a piece of steel with one of his palm-lasers, for instance, would take more power than a full-sized nuclear reactor could produce, and the power necessary to keep a man-sized suite of armor airborne would be prohibitive, given space considerations.

I am happy to report that this is satisfactorily addressed in the movie: Iron Man’s exosuit is powered by distilled awesome.

Tony Stark: gets rich making weapons for the military.
Tony Stark: drinks gin, drives sports cars, and sleeps with super models. Often at the same time.
Tony Stark: gets captured by evil men of indistinct ethnicity.
Tony Stark: builds a suit of armor, decimates bad guys.
Tony Stark: has a crisis of conscience.
Tony Stark: builds even better armor, decimates even more bad guys.
Tony Stark: wins.

Cute Christian Missionary: “We need to bring hope to the world! If you lose your life trying to save someone else, it wasn’t a waste.”

John Rambo: Fondles cross. “You might be right. Hey, look, evil brown people.” Kills them all.

I’ve tried to write this three times now, but I have to keep starting over. Dan in Real Life is the best movie I’ve seen this year, and if you haven’t seen it, go and do so. And do so quickly, because it’s probably just about finished with its run in theaters.

But the reason I have to keep starting this over is that I’m not sure how to feel about it. It was, in one shot, the funniest, most touching, and most depressing movie I’ve seen all year.

Spoilers follow, so stop reading if you haven’t seen the movie yet.

Dan in Real Life is an interesting creature, because it manages to balance some of the funniest moments I’ve seen this season - I laughed out loud a lot while watching this movie - with some of the most heart-rending. When you watch this movie, you’ll be laughing one moment, and in the next you’ll be asking yourself how Dan is able to hold on and keep going.

The humor in this movie isn’t the kind of slapstick, “oh no, he just got hit in the crotch, again” kind of thing that passes for humor in most films these days, but the kind of humor that’s funny because it’s real. It’s funny because it shows us how absurd a lot of real life is, how absurd we are. It’s the kind of humor that would make you cringe a little, if you were watching it happen to real people instead of characters on a screen.

And the emotion isn’t the kind of contrived disaster that is so easy to find in Hollywood, either. Aside for the initial conceit, that Dan just happens to meet and fall for his brother’s girlfriend at a random bookstore-cum-bait-shop on the Jersey Shore, there was never a moment when I thought that the writers were cheating to get an emotional response. When you’re watching this movie, you can see pieces of your own life, your own family. Dan thinks and acts like a real person, and you can identify with him.

At least I can. Maybe you’re all better adjusted than I am - actually, that’s pretty much a certainty - but when I was watching Dan, I could see myself. When I was watching Dan, I could see the train-wreck coming, I could see the disaster looming, I could see the fallout, and I wanted to shout at him, to grab him and shake him and tell him that he’s going to mess everything up. And I could see myself doing the exact same thing.

Love will make you do the stupid. Especially when it seems like it was meant to be, like it was arranged by heaven. Especially when it seems like it might be your last chance to be happy.

Dan is, to borrow a phrase, living a life of quiet desperation. Watching him make breakfast and pack up the car and sleep next to the washing machine, I could almost hear his thoughts: “this is my life, and I just have to live it.” He’s broken, and he knows it, and he’s just trying to do the best he can.

And then she comes along, and it seems like she can make everything better. You can open up to her, talk to her, trust her. She can relate to you, understand you, have fun with you. It was meant to be. And it might never happen again.

You would do anything to hold on to something like that. So would I. So would Dan. He’d try to be strong, he’d try to be moral, he’d try to do what’s right, but in the end he’d fail. Just like I would.

In real life, the ending to a story like this is almost never happy. In real life, your brother doesn’t forgive you that easily, your family doesn’t forget that quickly.

But this isn’t real life, this is Dan in Real Life. This is a movie. And in the movies, everything works out in the end. In the movies, your brother hooks up with the hot salsa dancing plastic surgeon, your daughters love your new girlfriend, and the family doesn’t feel at all awkward about the whole thing.

If the movie hadn’t ended this way, I would be on here telling you how much it sucked, and how I don’t go to the movies to be reminded of real life. Instead, I’m here telling you that this was the best movie I’ve seen in a very long time, and that it made me think of real life anyway.

Some people are shop boys, and some people are boys who happen to work in shops. You, Tristan, are not a shop boy. -Yvaine

The best fairy tales take an ordinary boy or girl, living an ordinary life in an ordinary place, and take them somewhere fantastic, prove them to be someone exceptional, and take us along for the journey, reminding us what it was like to dream that our ordinary lives, our ordinary selves, could be transformed if the stars aligned just so.

Stardust is one of the best fairy tales I’ve seen in some time, and one of the best movies of the summer. This summer, we’ve seen cars that turn into giant robots, old cops who still die hard, boy wizards, undead pirates, amnesiac super spies, and an Emo Spider-Man, but Stardust is something unique: Stardust reminds us of when things were simple, when good was good, evil was evil, and life-and-death situations could be dealt with with the wry confidence that the good guys always win.

Our story begins when a star falls to earth, in the form of a beautiful young girl named Yvaine (Claire Danes). This begins a struggle between three individuals: Tristan, who has promised to retrieve the Star to prove his love for his would-be love, Victoria, Septimus, who can only take his place on the throne by capturing the Star’s necklace, and the cruel witch Lamia, who’s power and youth can only be restored by consuming the heart of a Star.

Sitting in the theater, I thought to myself that I might be watching this generation’s Princess Bride, which coming from me is strong praise indeed. Stardust isn’t as quotable as Bride, but it does shine in one area in particular: character arks. The one issue I have with The Princess Bride is that the two main characters never really change. Wesley goes from a humble farm-boy to the most feared pirate on the seas, but we never really see it happen, and Buttercup is the epitome of helpless damsel is distress for the run of the movie. In Stardust, we get the chance to watch our characters grow and change.

Tristan starts the movie as a shy, clumsy boy pining for the affection of Victoria, a manipulative, materialistic, shallow girl who’s only quality is being the most attractive girl in a rather small town. He begins her quest for the Star because Victoria has promised her hand in marriage if Tristan can retrieve it by her birthday. When Tristan discoverers that the Star is actually a girl, he promptly kidnaps her, intent to drag her back to the village of Wall and claim Victoria’s hand - though he does promise the return her to the sky once he is engaged. Along the way, however, Tristan becomes Yvaine’s protector, rather than captor, crosses paths with evil witches and cruel princes, is captured by a gay pirate (played wonderfully by Robert DeNiro, who is obviously having a great time), learns to fight and dance and love, and finally becomes a man.

Yvaine’s journey is just as important. She begins the story a haughty, sarcastic aristocrat, upset that she has been brought down to earth and rightfully angry at Tristan’s behavior. Through the course of the story, though, we learn just what it takes to capture the heart of a Star, and just how powerful that heart can be.

The humor is funny, the action is rewarding, and the story is solid: Stardust comes highly recommended.