"It's a lion! It's huge!"

Baaahhhhhhhhh

I mean, by his very act of going out to find the girl he loves, the main character is not only indirectly responsible for the death of two of his friends, but only the soldiers who had to wait until they got on board the helicopter and try and fly them out. And then they don’t even check on the pilot to see if he is alive – what a bunch of pricks.

You brought this onto yourselves! Now pay for it, fuckos!

No sequel please

Death Race annoyed me particularly when Anderson had to resort to jump-cutting-mini-zoom camera action to add "action" when none was present.

Viva Odette Yustman and Lizzy Caplan! Yowza.

On the other hand, your friend is setting himself up for some major disappointment. No matter how much he avoids trailers, etc., there are some films he will have preconceptions of. Whether it be his favourite superhero or a beloved novel, his anticipation for these films will be greater. And, as we saw with The Spirit, some are not always what a fan of the source material could have expected. The trailer gives us a decent idea of what we are in for. Your first exposure to a "creative interpretation" perhaps should not come on opening night; after spending your hard-earned $10 on it, 5 minutes into it thinking "WTF is this???".

If she had been his wife or she was pregnant with his child, yes I could see him doing it. But this guy has always been a nice-guy playing it safe and by the rules, strange time now for him to become a wannabe action hero.

2 hrs later I was offering to buy everyone a round of beers as penance...

Can't wait to see "Waltzing With Bashir" in a local place near Boston.

Good list.

next year, submit your lists to Harry, combine them into AICNS TOP 10 MOVIES and then display the individual votes.

If you had a real editor, that's what you'd do.

No, a movie's purpose is to achieve whatever it sets out to do, and then it's up to the audience to decide (a) whether the goal was worthy, and (b) whether the goal was achieved. This is why it's pointless to argue whether "Amistad" is btter than "Jackass: The Movie."

Regarding WALL•E and KUNG FU PANDA, it seems obvious to me that Pixar was trying to stretch and grow the medium, and also to make a relevant statement about how we live our lives.

KUNG-FU PANDA, on the other hand, was so by-the-numbers that there wasn't a single unpredictable scene in the entire film. The character arcs, the plot, the jokes -- anyone who has ever seen a movie could have described KUNG FU PANDA in detail without ever watching a frame of it. Was it entertaining? I suppose, if you're into cinematic comfort food, it's probably a really good time. Me, I was bored. To me, the goal (making lots of money) simply wasn't very worthy.

I'm not going to knock KUNG FU PANDA for being what it is, but it's seems rather obvious to me that WALL•E is the "better" movie.

"... an assault on the senses."

"The experience had much more in common with a Universal Studios ride than it did with a movie."

Um, is this stuff supposed to be an *endorsement*? Seriously?

"Imagine if you went on the King Kong ride or something and then had to listen to a bunch of D.B.'s complaining about the 'plot' or the 'acting.'"

Yes, that would be stupid. But we weren't on a ride. We were in a movie theatre.

Please. There's no accounting for taste, but let's not pretend the dumbing-down of movies is a good thing.

And yes, I believe in “save the girl”, but I do have a basic understanding of human evolution and psychology. I can believe that someone is going to save the girl if it is for reproductive reasons – it is his mate and/or she is carrying his child – or if it is someone has a strong bond with and it is in his nature to do something. I can imagine the character in this movie trying to stop a mugger or an abusive boyfriend; I can’t believe he would risk his life to go out in a city where a giant monster is roaming.

And you might disagree with me Smackfu, but I will just add one thing: when is the last time you saw a story about a young, wimpy yuppie braving a fire, earthquake, Katrina or the falling Twin Towers to rescue a loved one? I am being serious. The guys who actually go out and bust their ass’ to help loved ones or those in physical danger are usually the alpha males, blue-collar guys or radical individualist: the firemen, the cop, the soldier, the tough laborer, the outdoorsmen, the cowboy, the in-your-face hippie and the iconoclast. When a person falls on the tracks in NY subways, it is a construct worker or cop who jumps down there and save them, and not the guy who works out of a cubicle. He might help a loved one if they are trapped in a burning building together, but not if he is has to run across town and run up 34-flights of stairs. If that is the case, he expects a professional to do it.

If the movie had been about a construction worker or cop whose pregnant wife is trapped, I would have bought it for a second. But with these characters, it just doesn’t fly.

Massa, I normally agree with you, but Blindness was straight-up crap. The book left it open to be something really fantastic...instead, it was terrible.

I was in the army and thankfully never saw combat. Could I have handled it? Maybe but not because I was brave but because I was trained to handle it. Courage is basically being comfortable, whether it is walking a tight rope, driving a race car or approaching a hot girl in a bar. That is why I mentioned those types who seem to be the most likely to act brave. It seems to be part of their nature not to lose their cool or feel anxious when stressful things happen. They live with stress constantly, and are comfortable amongst it. Not all types of stress, but they seem to handle life-or-death situations better. Put a tough truck driver in an office and tell him to make a million dollar deal and he’ll start sweating; put the same guy in a bar with some bikers and he probably will know how to come out alive.

And when you can resort to comfort, you resort to training. So while no soldier has ever faced a giant monster before, I can imagine the U.S. Army facing it because they would fall back on training, discipline and the loyalty to their comrades (especially their fire teams and squads). What does the main characters of Cloverfield have to fall back upon? Romantic notions of heroism we have seen in hundreds of bad movies but not in real life? That is all.

If you wanted me to believe that our hero would risk his life for this girl, she should have been more than just a friend or girl he was having a crush on. She should have been his fiancée, his wife or the mother of his children. Now I can believe why he is risking his neck to go out and save her, instead of this geek fantasy about running out to save the life of the girl you have a crush on. That fantasy was ridiculous in high school, as an adult it is pathetic.

Plus, if his motivation is to save his girl, what is the other characters motivation? Hey, you’re my buddy; I’m not going to let you do this alone? Maybe the guy with the camera would have tagged along, but not the two girls. They have only a tentative connection to him, including his sister-in-law.

Once again, you might find this believable but I don’t.

Maybe you have to watch a ton of kung fu movies to understand just how much they got RIGHT with Kung Fu Panda, but damn, it's still the surprise of the year. Hopefully the same approach to style and storytelling will follow over into the sequel. Just don't let the folks responsible for the Shrek monstrosities (ooh, a pun) get anywhere near it.

My only question to Massa is, if you enjoyed the movie so much, why'd you leave it off the official top 10? I know it's in mine.

1) I was in the Silent Movie Theatre in LA the night it’s owner got killed. When the gunman ran down the theatre aisle firing shots over the crowds head, I jumped on my then girlfriend to protect her from being hit then chased after the gunman with my brother until we came to the end of the alley. Finally realizing that he was armed and we weren’t, we decided not to risk death by continuing to chase after him and instead slinked back into the theatre. However, while we at least chased after him and one of our friends went to go call the police (this was before cell phones) the rest of the yuppie crowd to my knowledge just hunkered behind their seats, unsure what to do. They seemed to afraid and unsure to even run out of the theatre.

2) I was a parking lot in downtown Burbank when my brother, a friend and me witnessed a gang of guys beating the shit out of two small guys laying on the concrete. Seeing that the security guards were just going to sit there and do nothing, we jumped out and started fighting the eight guys, and we were doing pretty good until they started pulling out frickin’ knives. We still manage to fight them off until the police arrived, but in the process my brother’s hand was slashed and my friend was stabbed twice in the side and almost had his lungs punctured and killed. Once again, none of the club-hopping set came to are aid or even called the police (for the record, the guys we were fighting were Armenians and the guys who called the cops were Armenians as well; the reason they had called the cops is because they had dealt with Armenian thugs before and hated them).

3) I was with a friend of mine and we met up with his girlfriend and a bunch of her friends. She decided to go off with her friends when we noticed that before they had gotten into their car they were involved in a yelling match with a guy. The guy started pushing the girls around, including my friend’s girlfriend. Did he rush over to help her? No. Instead I went over there and pushed this guy aside and told him to leave these people alone. After the girls had driven off four of his buddies showed up and surrounded me. Did my friend come rushing to my rescue? No, he stayed in the back hiding. Did the girls come driving back to let me jump into the car? Hell no, I was on my own. I only managed to avoid a fight by doing what I do best, bullshiting, when I declared that I was from Fucking Detroit and I will take them all on (I am actually from Minneapolis, a city with not nearly as tough rep as Detroit).

These and about a half-dozen other incidents have taught me that people are not nearly as brave or courageous as they like people to believe, especially the yuppies in suits or who grew up with sheltered backgrounds. And that actually includes me as well. The guys I have met in my life who don’t back down, who are really willing to risk their lives for a loved one usually are the same type of people who join the police force, the fire department, the army, have physically tough, demanding jobs or are the risk takers in life.

Would I go into a burning building to save my girlfriend? Yes. Would I rush a gunmen or a guy wielding a knife to protect my parents? Yes. Would I go into a dangerous, devastated area that is still very hazardous to try and find a girl I have a crush on and try to help her? No, and you can call me a coward but I know that is beyond my capabilities and that most likely I wouldn’t be able to help her but instead would end up in just as much trouble a her. I would however try to use all my energy to get someone qualified to go over there and rescue her. If you would be willing to go brave a dangerous area Smackfu to save some girl you like, I salute you. You are a braver, or more foolish, man than me.

"Oh, I'm the Dragon Warrior? Sure why not."

"Oh, I have to defeat Tai Lung? I don't want to, but you told me I will, so sure, why not. I'm just a Fanboy going with the flow. "

What a waste of potential.

The criticism Cloverfield gets here is just dumb and generic: "The characters were douche bags" "Not realistic" etc. I mean, I can see not liking the film...but what the hell did you expect? It's a "monster from outer space movie". Sit back and enjoy. The whole post 9/11 subtext and first person video perspetive that dominates our media now...not to mention the whole attempt to keep the monster etc. hush hush in this day and age was a nice novel approach that made it different. It did exactly what it set out to do.

Hellboy II looked great but sequels like this tend to load up on dumb humor, one liners, drunken duets. I never once felt conflict or tension in the course of the story. Eye candy. Too cute. "oooh, there;s a cool monster" "oooh, that was a cool choreographed fight scene"...You know everything is going to play out fine...you're just curious to see how they get there. I never once knew where the hell Cloverfield was going and enjoyed the ride all the more.