This Movie's Underrated - "2010: The Year We Make Contact"

Awwww jyeah, son. Barring Outland, basically every movie I've reviewed in this column has been seen as indefensible by a number of people. But this is a whole other animal. 2001: A Space Odyssey isn't just a classic, isn't just a great movie. It's a turning point in the sci-fi genre. It's a cultural touchstone. It practically created the media trope of a computer gone mad, and its effects can be felt today, even down to its production design. Apple based the aesthetics of damn near every product it's ever released on the clean, sterile white and black of the Discovery, and even named the iPod after the globular rides of Bowman and Poole.

2001 is nebulous, dense, sparing, and does a tango over the line between style and substance. It asks the biggest questions of all: are we alone in the universe? Who made us what we are? And where the hell are we going next?

And what the HELL is a "bush baby"!?

The Lords of Suck: Or How I Learned To Stop Watching and Walk Out of the Theater

I've never walked out of a movie before. Seriously, not once. Not during The Covenant, not during The Chronicles of Riddick, not even during Master of Disguise. Some of the bad movies I've seen, like The Covenant, are at least fun to make fun of. Plus, each movie had their redeeming qualities. And you've read on this blog before that I consider several movies to be underrated that others would write off immediately. At the very least, I consider them worthy of examination, if only to find out what went wrong.

Picture unrelated.

I'm not sure anything went wrong with Lords of Salem, the newest film by Rob Zombie. I'm sure everything went exactly according to the way he wanted it to go. But that's the biggest problem. And that's why I walked out.

THIS SUMMER...The Hamburglar has had ENOUGH