Moviegoers in search of political satire have had a rough time these past few years, as Hollywood has backed away from the genre due to America’s contentiously divided electorate. Sure, the electorate has always been divided, but rarely with as much venom and animosity as we have seen in the 2000 era.

Enter Bud Johnson, the pickup-driving, beer-swilling underachiever who doesn’t much care about anything. Hollywood has put it’s faith in him, thinking that perhaps his story can ease some of America’s political pain.

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Once upon a time, Lucasfilm put out two trilogies of great movies. Everyone loved them and longed for more, but it seemed each series was destined not to go beyond three entries. Then, many years later, some sequels to one of those trilogies finally arrived. Everyone got their panties all in a bind, their bowels aroar with excitement. Then those sequels turned out to be indisputably horrible and everyone everywhere was disillusioned, most of all me. A few years later, along came a sequel to that other trilogy of great movies, a sequel called Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull. And saints be praised, it didn’t bite the big one like the new entries in that other series did. No, it turns out that the new Indiana Jones movie is pretty okay.

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I’m not gonna lie to you: Raiders of the Lost Ark might be my favorite movie. It’s definitely the movie I’ve seen the most times. In fact, I’ve probably seen it more times than Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi put together. Crammed into its two hours is each and every one of the elements I look for in a movie, and once they start coming they never stop.

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I hope you guys appreciate all I do for you. I could review an easy movie—Stripes, for example, or Bill and Ted’s Excellent Adventure. Watching those would be enjoyable. Heck, it would even be a downright good time. Instead, I am willing to put myself through the unimaginable terror of watching Attack of the Clones, the single most wretched movie ever made. I’m not sure I’ll have adequate words to describe the pain, the fear and the suffering that this movie causes, but I’ll try. It’s all for you.

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What Happens in Vegas is Hollywood’s next entry in a seemingly endless string of romantic comedies which try to market themselves to both the male and female demographics. The trailer is full of wild, loud party shots of the movie’s attractive stars living it up in glamorous Las Vegas, and then playing endless pranks on one another, each trying to drive the other one crazy after they’re forced to live together. But I hope you weren’t actually interested in seeing those things the trailer promised, because the film is definitely chock full of everything but parties and pranks.

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A word of warning: You can often tell by the title design of a film — the way the name of the movie, and its credits, are displayed during the opening sequence — what kind of movie it’s going to be. For example, a horror movie might be more scary if its credits are particularly creepy and well done.

But, it’s safe to say, if the movie you’re watching has a sequence in which the title, and all of the actor’s names, break up into little sparkles and flowers, then scatter across the screen, you should probably run. Run very, very fast.

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The folks at the American Film Institute would have you believe they know best, but if I made a list of the 100 greatest movies, Easy Rider wouldn’t be anywhere near it. It defines an era and an attitude, they say. It encapsulates the disenfranchised soul-searching of an entire generation. Twaddle! The truth is that this movie, as Oscar Madison might say, is garbage.

Praise it all you like, but you’ll never convince me that it’s anything more than what it appears to be on the surface—a rambling mish-mash of a low budget biker film, where everyone involved was high all the time and it shows.

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Expelled is Ben Stein’s little piece of propaganda, a screed posing as a documentary. If it is a documentary, it’s in serious trouble; it’s more misguided than An Inconvenient Truth and, if you can imagine, packed with more outright lies than even the works of Michael Moore.

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As it loudly proclaims in all of its previews, Forgetting Sarah Marshall is a Judd Apatow production – so it shouldn’t really come as a surprise that it’s more of a romantic comedy than anything else.

It’s worth mentioning, however, that this story is significantly more kind to its male lead than most chick flicks, especially other Apatow creations — namely, Knocked Up.

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My preference in movies watched for entertainment runs to things like Die Hard, Army of Darkness, Airplane!, and Star Wars. I appreciate great dramas, but most of them require that I get in the proper mindset—that I prepare myself—and that just doesn’t happen very often. Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner, on the other hand, is a movie I could watch every single day.

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