I watched Signs last night, a movie I've been avoiding ever since I discovered that the aliens, who visit Earth (3/4ths of which is covered by water) to harvest humans (who are 98% water), can be killed by pouring water on them. I'm dropping this spoiler because the movie is pretty suspenseful and entertaining if you aren't blindsided by the idiocy later (one more spoiler: Jesus Saves). While looking at some reviews of The Village, which sounds like M. Night's next step down the inevitable trail away from well-crafted thrills towards Significance, I came across a line in Roger Ebert's one-star review that is, without question, the definitive anti-smackdown.

It's a flimsy excuse for a plot, with characters who move below the one-dimensional and enter Flatland.

Wouldn't Flatland (wtf, but anyway) be TWO-dimensional, and therefore NOT a step down from one? This is what happens when Richard Roeper is your sparring partner, people. Ebert once put a transcript of their debate over the merits of Episode II: Attack Of The Clones on his site. Being on a show that debates the merits of Episode II: Attack Of The Clones is nothing to be proud of.


Not a bright man.

Stephanie Zacharek of Salon is my favorite film critic who isn't named Pauline Kael, but she ends her understandably awkward explanation of Harold & Kumar Go To White Castle's racial-political perspective with a nonsensical capper worthy of the Eeb.

"Harold & Kumar" is a reminder that our great land is made up of people from many nations, and a few of them are quite stoned. Let he who is without sin light the first joint.

Ok, does that last bit make any sense to you? The closing sentence of a review is usually bound to suck, but I can't believe this got past an editor.

They say (at least in Signs) that there is no such thing as a coincidence, and it's been exactly one year since I last put a movie review on here. I swear I didn't know that until I was writing this post.