Movies

Harry Knowles' Ain't It Cool News is the Schroedinger's Cat of movie Web sites: it either completely rocks or it totally blows, and you have no idea which one it will be until you open the box and see if the single atom of coolidium has decayed or not.

On the plus side of the ledger, AICN gets tons of reviews of upcoming blockbusters written by fans invited to screenings. Open source movie reviews. If you're a "Star Wars" fanboy, you can read what other of your ilk are saying about "Revenge of the Sith".

The downside is the puerile nature of many of the reviews, not least from Harry himself, who revels -- no, wallows -- in his slovenly, geek-outed movie nerd persona.

But one consistently good feature that I check out regularly is Harry's picks for DVDs coming out that month.

The lists are breathtakingly comprehensive, and I've never heard of half to two-thirds of the titles listed. Knowles seems to have already seen 99 percent of all movies being released, and he gives each item a detailed blurb saying why it is worth watching.

For instance, here's an entry about "McQ", a John Wayne flick I'd never heard of:

I fucking love McQ! Wayne didn’t wield nearly enough automatic weapons dammit! Cuz here he is pretty damn awesome with one. This came out as a reaction to DIRTY HARRY – and while it certainly isn’t at that level – John Sturges was definitely no hack director. Wayne made two of these types of films, and I prefer the utter badass of this flick, but I have to admit to loving BRANNIGAN which he made the year after, which has Wayne kicking Brit ass!

Those first couple of sentences make me want to see this film.

Here's his comments on Christian Slater's "Alone in the Dark":

Quint says you ain’t got the balls to weather this shit. This is the masochistic turd blossom of the month. If nailing your penis to a two by four has stopped hurting, give this a try. Quint says it is “It Is All Clear.

Well, that doesn't really make me want to see this move, and my penis is still stinging, anyway.