On the Nature of a Good Review, or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love Movies

Perhaps the most significant accusation leveled against The Cinema King, other than the predilection of a fairly small kingdom with an otherwise unknown number of subjects (seriously, readers, make yourself known!), is the call that there are too many good reviews on this site.

This bears investigation. Let us then as statisticians evaluate the factual merit of this claim. Of 77 posts tagged as "movie reviews" (thank you, Blogger), I would only describe 16 as more than 50% negative. (Movies that I halfheartedly enjoyed I evaluated on a case-by-case basis and decided from there.) That leaves 61 positive reviews on this site - a 79% ratio -- almost 4 out of 5 reviews.

So the claim that the majority of reviews on this site are positive has merit. We could now turn to the claim of "too many good reviews." Are there too many good reviews on this site? Is 80% too much? Unfortunately, I can't seem to find a ratio for the reviews of Roger Ebert (a reviewer with whom I have been known to disagree but whose writings I still very much respect), so we don't quite have a barometer. "Too much" is perhaps too subjective a term for me to properly evaluate here, so let us leave it to your discretion. If 80% of my reviews being positive ones perturbs you, I can point you in the direction of some snarkier blogs.

However, let me first offer some explanation as to why the majority of my reviews are positive. For a review to emerge as a positive one, two things must occur. The reviewer must have enjoyed the film, and the reviewer must be able to articulate that enjoyment in the form of a clear and entertaining piece of prose that may best bear the term "review." I attempt always to fulfill the second of these requirements, providing content that I hope my readers enjoy (do you?) while satisfying my own desires as a writer. The first one is a little more difficult to do. I can't always guarantee that I'll like a movie before I go into it. But I frequently can.

That's where Mr. Ebert and I are doing different jobs. Yes, we're both movie reviewers (though I am The Cinema King, he is far more prolific and popular), but he has the means, opportunity, and in some ways the responsibility to see far more movies than I do. Where I have 77 reviews on my site, Rotten Tomatoes registers an excess of 6200 reviews from Camp Ebert. Therefore, his potential for writing negative reviews is exponentially greater than my own. He's literally written thousands more reviews than I have (he's also been doing it for longer, but the nascency of this blog isn't something I can get nostalgic about just yet).

There's a final difference between Sir Ebert and myself: choice. I don't mean to imply that he has no volition in his capacity as reviewer (potentially apocryphal stories have him walking out of the cinema), but I think it's safe to say that I - standing in front of the shelf in a rental store or a library or media emporium - have a bit more freedom in which movies I watch and review. That's why the uneven quantitative comparison between us. My greater freedom of choice is a double-edged sword. Unlike Mr. Ebert, I never get invited to preview screenings (save for a pre-midnight show of Pirates of the Caribbean: At World's End on one of my more unforgettable birthdays), and so my reviews are frequently less than timely; the fact that 15 posts on this site are tagged with a decade before 2000 is testament to the fact that timeliness isn't one of my chief concerns.

However, greater powers of selection in moviegoing allows me to weed out movies I know I won't like, such as The Ugly Truth (watch out for a Trailer Park post on that stinker coming soon). Since I can choose the films I review, I can limit my scope to films I'm dying to see (Michael Mann's Heat was viewed days before I resumed my reviewing enterprise, and it met with my approval and a query as to just how influential it was for Nolan on The Dark Knight) or to films that I'm sort of lukewarm about seeing. I won't spend my time watching a movie I know I won't enjoy when I could be watching one I will. That's perhaps the greatest reason for the 80% approval rating on this site: choice.

I hope that clears up any thoughts on my being too enthusiastic of a film fan. Admittedly, I have some "guilty pleasures" - at my place of employment, I'm still being chided for enjoying Hairspray and Sweeney Todd more than No Country for Old Men (even if I'm starting to recant that position) - but that's the beauty of reviews. In the words of the great Dennis Miller, "Of course, that's just my opinion. I could be wrong."

Trailer Park: Inglourious Basterds (2009) [Trailer #2]

For starters, I'm reviewing the second trailer for this video, though I'll be taking for granted a slight familiarity with the first trailer (and that one's embedded at the bottom of this post).

We've been waiting since Kill Bill for the next Quentin Tarantino movie (okay, Grindhouse fans, Death Proof counts) and here it is. We've been hearing about Inglourious Basterds (back when it was spelled Inglorious Bastards) for some time now, and I was just about to relegate it into the dead pool where The Vega Brothers currently tends bar. Thankfully, Tarantino managed to get his script put together and filmed in time for the 2009 movie season.

This one looks like what every Tarantino fan loves - kitsch, violence, and hyperstylized dialogue. Furthermore, Brad Pitt devotees will probably have much to enjoy when it comes to his distinctive characterization of Lt. Aldo Ray (an interesting combination, one reviewer has noticed, of Cary Grant and Foghorn Leghorn), whose every movement is in step with a unique character - the kind for which Tarantino is best known.

Inglourious Basterds probably isn't landmark cinema, but it looks like it'll be a lot of fun. Plus, Mike Meyers is doing an accent again, and Hitler is wearing a cape. Like I said, a lot of fun.

The Game (1997)

It's a good thing director David Fincher is so articulate, because I can't think of a better way to describe his 1997 thriller The Game other than "a fashionable, good-looking Scrooge, lured into a Mission: Impossible situation with a steroid shot in the thigh from The Sting."

Michael Douglas is Nicholas Van Orton, an investment banker reminiscent of Douglas's turn as Gordon Gekko in Stone's Wall Street. A visit from Nicholas's brother Conrad (Sean Penn) sets into motion Nicholas's involvement in a game perpetrated by the shady and mysterious business Consumer Recreation Services. The game begins innocuously enough, but soon Nicholas finds himself fighting for everything - literally, everything - he has in order to win the game.

Kudos to Fincher - director of cult favorites Se7en and Fight Club - for keeping the film moving without ever really giving the audience anything concrete to latch onto. The screenplay is extra-strong here, its postponed questions facilitating the bait-and-switch Fincher deftly pulls on the audience. For two hours, the film careens from plot twist to surprise misdirection, without ever really revealing its hand until literally the last scene of the film. Fincher never gives the audience more than an inch in this one, keepng me on the edge of my seat while asking, "Okay, he's in on it? No, wait, she is? Is he? Whose side is she on?" Like Nicholas, the audience is kept in the dark for most of the film, and so the film is a great deal of fun as far as unpredictability goes.

Where performances are concerned, Douglas is superb as always. Having proved himself adept at thrillers in both Fatal Attraction and Don't Say a Word (perhaps the closest thematically to his performance here), Douglas is, to borrow a line from his co-star Sean Penn, "one of our finest." Penn does a great job in his first scene, which sets up a stark and immediate difference between the Van Orton brothers, but he's nowhere near the presence that Douglas is in the film (if memory serves, Penn only has about three or four scenes total). And Deborah Kara Unger, as a waitress who gets caught up in the game, doesn't do much but serve as a focal point for a few twists - the only ones I can profess to have seen coming.

The Game is not for everyone. It's not for those who like their movies cut and dry, black and white. It's not for those who can't handle top-notch suspense, and it's certainly not for those who get disturbed by movies that ask "How would you handle this?" It is, however, an excellent film for those of us who like a movie that keeps us guessing, that never lets up, and that is as finely crafted as a whittled whistle. The Game is delightfully always one step ahead of its audience.

The Game is rated "R for language, and for some violence and sexuality." Language consists of the occasional F-bomb, and violence begins to escalate only as the game gets closer to the finish line - neither of these are excessive because the real tension is all in your head. Sexuality comes with a few suggestive photographs that are used as part of the game.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year (2008)

When it comes to the subject of High School Musical 3: Senior Year, I have two confessions.

First confession: I saw this movie of my own volition. I wasn’t dragged, and I wasn’t sitting in the fourth row for any reasons but my own.

Second confession: I actually liked HSM 3 (to use ‘Wildcat’ shorthand).Coming from a guy whose favorite movie of all time is Christopher Nolan’s The Dark Knight (followed closely by Martin Scorsese’s The Departed), that may come as a bit of a shock. So I suppose a third confession is in order: I’m actually a fan of the franchise.

True, I don’t have posters of Zac Efron on my wall, nor do I own a single pink cap, but I do own the first movie on DVD, and I even know what a jazz square is.

Maybe I’m a little biased, then. But where the first two installments of the franchise were fluffy teeny-bopper schmaltz-fests, Senior Year is actually a movie in its own right.

Efron leads the ensemble cast (with six leads and scads of supporting characters) as the Wildcats are chugging through those last days of high school. There’s no senioritis here; Troy, Gabriella (Vanessa Hudgens), Sharpay (Ashley Tisdale) and Ryan (Lucas Grabeel, still my favorite) are all scrambling to stage their last musical at East High, a chronicle of their own experiences as they head off to college. Throw prom and separation anxiety - Gabriella’s moving to Stanford, exactly 1,053 miles away from her doe-eyed boyfriend - and three new sophomores into the mix, and you’ve got a $42 million opening weekend.

If the first two movies had catchy songs (who didn’t find themselves ready to “Bop to the Top” or ask “What Time Is It?” in the first two?), Senior Year plays the music to the hilt. I could walk through each of the film’s 12 musical sequences (two more than usual), but there’s really not a dud in the bunch.

“Now or Never” is a fun race against the clock as Troy and the basketball team have only 16 minutes to win a state championship. “I Want It All” will have you humming along as Sharpay and Ryan dream of star status. And “Just Wanna Be with You” is perhaps the most moving piece of the whole film, powerful in its simplicity.

Then there’s “Senior Year Spring Musical” itself, an eight minute track which features reprises of many of the movie’s most memorable tracks. This is unquestionably the best scene in the movie, in which all the characters get to shine, even the ridiculous show-off Jimmy “The Rocket” (newcomer Matt Prokop).

‘Ridiculous’ is probably a word I should use more frequently, both in relation to the movie itself and my enjoyment of it. Try to keep a straight face when Troy dances it out during “Scream” or when he and his best friend Chad inexplicably turn into little kids during “The Boys Are Back.”

Though the music is top notch here, catchy without being overtly bubblegum-ish, the acting isn’t slouching, either. Admittedly, the caliber of acting in a Disney movie isn’t something to analyze too closely, but there’s no question these six have graduated near-legitimacy. Grabeel’s got a part in Milk, the Sean Penn biopic of Harvey Milk, and Efron’s fronting a Footloose remake in 2010. [Alas, this has changed since I wrote this review. It seems Efron doppleganger Chace Crawford is now going to cut footloose.]

Here, the actors feel comfortable in their roles. Efron is all too believable as the confused Troy Bolton, torn between the basketball court and the stage. Hudgens will break your heart as she copes with leaving East High, and Tisdale is delightful as scheming queen bee Sharpay. Even Corbin Bleu fits perfectly as Chad, whose principal preoccupation is finding the perfect way to ask Taylor (Monique Coleman) to the prom.

I’m not a fan of the three newcomers - the aforementioned Jimmy “Rocketman” Zara, Tiara Gold (Jemma McKenzie-Brown) and Donny Dion (Justin Martin). I can understand Disney’s desire to spin these three off into a new trilogy, but it’s tough to get behind any of them. Instead of being interesting new characters, they seem only to be younger versions of Troy, Sharpay and Chad. Tiara is perhaps the worst offender, frustratingly uninspired and with little to no singing ability at all.

HSM 3 won’t win any awards - or hearts, for that matter - but I feel fairly confident I got my money’s worth here, an assertion I wouldn’t make for its box office competition, Saw V. In terms of pure (both unadulterated and innocent) fun, though, it’s difficult not to empathize with the movie’s cast. They’re clearly having a blast with this one.

I did, too.

High School Musical 3: Senior Year is rated G for being so gosh darn wholesome.

Now Broadcasting in Astonishing Widescreen!

"There is nothing wrong with your television set. Do not attempt to adjust the picture. We are controlling transmission. ... We will control the horizontal. We will control the vertical."

Ever since we at The Cinema King imported all the Trailer Park posts into one cozy little home,
we noticed something curious had changed in the interim. YouTube was posting widescreen trailers, but our humble little abode wasn't cut out for the beauty of a widescreen, higher-def video. Back in the days when Trailer Park lived on its own, videos were still fairly compact and fit comfortably in the niche provided by the good folks at Blogger. Not so anymore.

Fortunately, after hours of poring over code and tips from other bloggers, we've adapted. We've spread our wings, and we're now broadcasting in astonishing widescreen with more content, more video, and more of the benign reign of The Cinema King. Now you can enjoy all your favorite Trailer Park reviews without compromising the horizontal integrity of the trailers - because, let's be real, all the good stuff happens on that side of the screen anyway.

"We repeat, there is nothing wrong with your television set. You are about to participate in a great adventure. You are about to experience the awe and mystery which reaches from the inner mind" of The Cinema King ...to you!

The Brothers Grimm (2005)

The Brothers Grimm is almost Kaufman-esque, in a way, as a story about stories. By extension, then, I suppose it's the Pirates of the Caribbean of Charlie Kaufman stories - it doesn't take itself too seriously. But at the same time, it's a Terry Gilliam flick, which means The Brothers Grimm is superlatively visually stimulating, but coherence is not to be expected.

Fortunately, The Brothers Grimm is to date the most accessible Gilliam movie (excepting the brilliant Monty Python and the Holy Grail) I've seen.

These ain't your momma's Grimm Brothers, that's for sure. As portrayed by Matt Damon and Heath Ledger, Will and Jake - not Wilhelm and Jakob - are the 19th century equivalent of Ghostbusters, liberating French-occupied Germany from all manner of witches and demons. We quickly learn that the Grimm enterprise is a sham, as Will & Jake are staging superstitious happenings in order to reap the profits for "defeating" the apparitions. Their fraud is unearthed by the villainous French General Delatombe (Jonathan Pryce) and his Italian torturer Cavaldi (Peter Stormare, best known as the killer from Fargo, Karl Hungus/Uli Kunkel from The Big Lebowski, and rogue electrician Slippery Pete from "Seinfeld"), who force the brothers Grimm to solve the mystery of the missing girls of Marbaden, a forest town filled with every fairy tale denizen you can imagine.

Coherent? Certainly. Spectacular? Not quite. Fun? If you're into this sort of thing.

The fun in the film comes from two places: the cast and the script. The cast isn't quite impeccable, since they never manage to steal the show from the vivacious visuals Gilliam provides, but they all do a nice job of creating memorable if cartoonish characters. Damon and Ledger (both of whom can do no wrong in my book, though I would have liked to see the original choice for Will - Johnny Depp) are the stars, and they've got a real chemistry as brothers that suggests a long history between the two. Ladies man Will often clashes with bookish Jake, and both Damon and Ledger do a solid job of instantly creating a plausible characterization and sticking to it throughout. Ledger's accent, though, is a touch distracting, an interesting combination of Sean Connery and The Joker circa The Dark Knight. Pryce and Stormare are far grosser caricatures, underspeaking a typically British xenophobia of all things continental; Pryce is a knockout as always, and Stormare brings his conventional slimy foreigner aura to his role. Lena Headey (the queen from 300) is negligible as guide/love interest, but Monica Bellucci - as the eerie Mirror Queen - carries well the seductive cruelty of her witchy character.

The script, tangled though it is in places (and admittedly muddy in others) is fun because it's filled to the brim with references, homages, and nods of the head toward the more commonly known career of the Grimm brothers and the fairy tale canon on the whole. Keep your eyes peeled for Snow White, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, Hansel & Gretel, and even The Gingerbread Man (look out, cookie from Shrek). Of course, knowing the identity of the little girl wearing a red hood in the forest isn't essential, but it helps make the later joke - in which Jake jots down in his journal "Little Red Riding Cape" - more entertaining.

I admitted the film is muddy, and it's classic Gilliam mud. After knocking out essential exposition within twenty minutes, the film dispenses with most claims to a plot and instead focuses on the Grimm dynamic and the eye-popping spectacle sequences (like moving trees, cobwebbed horses, and mud with a face). Consequently, the movie gets a little difficult to follow, especially when the narrative jumps quickly from scene to scene with little but imagination to fill in the gaps. What saves The Brothers Grimm from being another Gilliam headscratcher is its existence in a fantasy world where normal rules don't apply. I often ask of a Gilliam film, "How could this happen? What exactly is happening?" Here, the film makes up its own rules as it goes along, answering the question by saying, "X happens because that's the way fairy tales work."

The Brothers Grimm might not leave viewers happily ever after, but you'll at least turn the page with a smile on your face.

The Brothers Grimm is inscribed with a rating of "PG-13 for violence, frightening sequences and brief suggestive material." Violence and terror come on the whole from spooky creatures and foreboding forest environs, which some younger viewers might find more eerie than entertaining. As for suggestive material, Will is implied numerous times to be quite the ladies' man, but this is subtle and not prevalent.

Trailer Park: Transformers II: Revenge of the Fallen (2009)

Let's face it - you either love Michael Bay movies or, like the song goes in Team America: World Police, you wonder why he gets to keep making them.

Like most male moviegoers, I'm in the former category. Michael Bay movies contain three of my favorite things in the world: a nice hybrid of comedy and action, gorgeous women, and things blowing up. Honestly, I don't need much more in a movie, so it's a good thing that Michael Bay seldom goes above and beyond my expectations.

I enjoyed the first Transformers picture because it had all of the above and - more importantly - allowed a newbie like myself to get into the world and follow the plotline without all that heavy geekgasm'ing that a different director might have brought in. It looks like the second film is going to be much the same, with returning heroes and villains as well as a heavy load of action sequences that Bay does so well. It's not that his movies are unwatchable - there just isn't a lot of substance beyond the extremely watchable boom-booms.

And what else does one expect for a summer blockbuster? Something that makes the popcorn tastes better. Bingo, Bay. Bingo. See you at the movies!

Transformers 2: Revenge of the Fallen crash-lands on June 24, 2009.

Trailer Park: Aliens in the Attic (2009)

Formerly known as "They Came From Upstairs" (which I actually think is a pretty cool title - this one is too generic and has no mystery about it), Aliens in the Attic looks to be a fairly basic kiddie thriller about... well... aliens in the attic. Didn't we see this movie when it was called The Spiderwick Chronicles? (I sure didn't.)

About all this movie has going for it is Ashley Tisdale looking pretty, and I had my fill of that in the three High School Musical incidents--er, movies. Although the one alien who allies himself with the humans is predictably present, one can't help but at least smirk at his forcibly-lovable antics.

But the laughter dies when the ridiculous blond boyfriend is remote-controlled by the bratty boy who instantly resorts to such juvenile tactics as ballet and a numbing game of "Stop hitting yourself." (On that note, what the heck happened to Doris Roberts's career? I suppose if Estelle Harris can land a gig on the Disney Channel, Doris can slum a bit if it means a nice paycheck in a post-Raymond world.) Additionally, did we have to bring back Survivor's "Eye of the Tiger"? I haven't had a song stuck in my head like this since the Miley Cyrus debacle we'll never again speak of.

I'll be skipping this one. The kids will probably laugh themselves silly and maybe even wish there were aliens in their attic, but for parents this is nothing we haven't seen a billion times over.

Aliens in the Attic invades (sorry) on July 31, 2009.

Sorry, Wrong Number (1948)

I think that Sorry, Wrong Number and I had a bad connection - not that I was ever tempted to hang up.

Director Anatole Litvak adapts Lucille Fletcher's classic radio drama into a 90-minute thriller starring Barbara Stanwyck as the bedridden Leona Stevenson-Cotterell, who overhears a telephone conversation in which two mysterious men plot the murder of an innocent woman. The premise seems simple, but in true film noir tradition there is more than meets the eye when it comes to the secrets that Leona and her mysteriously absent husband (Burt Lancaster) are keeping. Through a series of phone calls (and flashbacks), the awful truth comes out.

I'll freely admit that I hadn't heard the radio play before watching this movie. (Prep work isn't exactly my forte when it comes to this site, loyal reader.) So I was coming into this one fresh, ready for a film noir twist but also prepared to play along until the ending happened. This isn't the best noir out there - I'm a devout fan of The Big Sleep, mystifying though much of it is - but Litvak does an adequate job of keeping the movie going while not losing sight of the urgency of the murder to be committed at 11:15. It's not much of a mystery, true, but the why is more important (and more surprising) than the who and what.

Stanwyck and Lancaster are serviceable in their roles as the not-so-happily married couple, though at times Stanwyck borders on overacting (though she does a fine job of creating a simultaneously sympathetic and loathsome heiress) while Lancaster underplays what should be a more devastated part. As items submitted from the 1940s, though, and from a genre that highly prizes stylization, this is to be expected and so does not detract from the overall enjoyment of the picture.

What does, sadly, hurt Sorry, Wrong Number is that it is a touch too long. Some of the flashback scenes overstay their welcome, unnecessarily belaboring a few points (such as the courtship or the chemist's dream of owning horses). Perhaps this is the fault of the script, adapted from a nonvisual medium, or perhaps this is the fault of Litvak, who fails to yell "Cut!" when scenes run overlong. In the hands of, say, Hitchcock, this one might have been a ballpark favorite (I'll have to have a look at Dial M for Murder now to see what Hitch does with a similar premise), but as it stands, a few lines get crossed with Sorry, Wrong Number.

That said, if you can make it through a moderately drawn-out initial 70 minutes, the last 20 minutes - in which the reality behind the overheard phone call is revealed and its staggering consequences play out in brutal real time - are solid gold. In top film noir tradition, the film's final reel makes brilliant use of shadows, shouting, and snappy cuts to build a white-knuckle tension and a staggering climax we all saw coming but hoped wasn't so. That's the genius, I suppose, of the film - like The Taking of Pelham 123, Sorry, Wrong Number did a bang-up job of convincing me how it wouldn't end... and then ended just like it was supposed to. I wouldn't have had it any other way.

It's like a great dessert after an okay main course.

Sorry, Wrong Number made it to theaters before the MPAA carved out their ratings stamps, but this is definitely PG fare. As a 40s flick, this one is fairly innocuous, without any on-screen violence - the tension and the action is all in your head.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe (2008)

As a once-was fan of the iconic and long-running Chris Carter sci-fi series, the announcement that a new X-Files film was en route made a small part of me giggly with excitement. Most of me, though, had moved on, wishing more that Sydney Bristow (from the long-since cancelled Alias) or even just Jack Bauer or the cast of Lost might show up in cinemaplexes. (Heck, I'll take that Arrested Development film any day, Ron Howard.)

So my concerns that perhaps I'd outgrown the paranormal excursions of FBI Agents Fox Mulder (David Duchovny) and Dana Scully (Gillian Anderson) stuck with me for the entire runtime of the film. The film picks up a few years after the series concluded, with Mulder & Scully officially retired from the FBI. But when a shady ex-con priest (Billy Connolly, who's occasionally spooky) has a vision of an abducted FBI agent, the Feds call in the original paranormal specialists, and the X-Files are re-opened once more.

The film tries to stand on its own, with only essential information carried over from the original series - Mulder is the believer, Scully the skeptic. But there are brief references peppered throughout the film that novices (and X-Files apostates like myself) will crane their brains to understand. Additionally, a major cast member from the original series makes a brief return near the finish of the film, but only fans of the TV show will find this cast appearance of any merit; others will query why the dramatic music and camera angle.

As someone whose memories of the series were fairly fuzzy, I realized that the film feels a lot like an episode of the series and is paced in much the same way. However, the movie is twice as long as an episode of the television show and at times feels like it. It's as though the filmmakers had only an hour of material and had to pad their script with longing gazes, dramatic panoramic aerial shots, and almost too many retreads of the "I believe/I don't believe" dialogue that X-heads have come to cherish as much as the Cigarette-Smoking Man (who sadly doesn't make an appearance here) loves his smokes.

Duchovny and Anderson (who's decried her difficulty remounting the "unicycle" of her character) step comfortably into their characters like a kicked-in pair of shoes, comfortable and familiar despite showing a few signs of aging. But the performances are strong, the characterizations convincing (if hit home a tad too much), and the chemistry still striking. The best performance, though he's only given a bit to work with, is Connolly's supporting role as Father Joe, the allegedly psychic priest with a damning past. The downturn, though, is that much of Connolly's performance is shrouded in "Is he or isn't he?" ambiguity, which the actor does well to play both sides and never truly give the audience a leg up on any one theory. As "new" agents, Amanda Peet and Xzibit do little more than become a younger Mulder and Scully, and their characterizations are neither convincing nor compelling.

Part of the main problem of the film, though it's an interesting if a bit overlong, is its ambiguity. When done right (Mulholland Drive on film, Watchmen in text), ambiguity can be a thought-provoking technique which keeps the audience thinking long after the credits - or the back cover - fall into place. However, I doubt I'll be thinking about the moral ramifications of some of the film's factors. I had fun watching the film - I enjoyed the film's sci-fi aspect and the gory subplot suitable for the TV series - but it's not something I'd put on my favorites list.

Diehard fans of the TV show, though, will probably love it. For me, I think I'll stick with the other film that opened on July 18, 2008.

Courtesy of the MPAA, The X-Files: I Want to Believe is rated "PG-13 for violent and disturbing content and thematic material." The film is more disturbing than violent (although there's some depiction of unorthodox medical practices), with a few well-crafted kidnapping-centric scenes that recall Demme's The Silence of the Lambs. I'm still at a loss as to what "thematic material" is, so I suppose this refers to the movie having a plot, drama, and suspense.