Movies movies movies movies movies. Movies!

Movies:

The only reason to see Bolt, says Megan Seling, is the hilarious hamster:

Rhino is fucking awesome. Rhino is probably the best fat sidekick in any Disney movie ever (because there's always a fat sidekick—Gus Gus, Flounder, Pumbaa, etc.), and he's the only reason you should even give a shit about this movie. Rhino is a fluffy hamster in a plastic ball who watches TV all day, and he's a big fan of Bolt's show. And wouldn't you know it, after a clumsy mishap takes Bolt off the set and into the real world, Bolt ends up in Rhino's trailer park. Rhino freaks the fuck out!

Paul Constant assesses Twilight (see below).

I really, really liked Slumdog Millionaire:

The film is exhilarating and gorgeous and contains the most sublime use of M.I.A.'s "Paper Planes" (not sick of it yet!) through which you've ever had the pleasure of whooshing. Little skinny-limbed boys navigate treachery and temptation and mountains of garbage, seas of garbage—their corner of Mumbai is all lurid colors and postapocalyptic beauty. Boyle's ambition is exhilarating—if he's going to fail, he's going to fail spectacularly (and the second half of the film is shamelessly melodramatic)—and Slumdog Millionaire is a crazy, blazing contradiction.

And Charles recommends Days and Clouds for Americans facing murky economic futures:

That's the moral core (the message) of this simple but pleasant film: Can the two recover from the ruins of their finances/marriage and lead a normal but severely limited life? We must not stop there, we must extend that question to all of America: Can we live and love with less wealth? The answer: If we are ever going to be happy again, we have to live and love with much, much less.

In my livejournal Concessions, I write a million words about Gregory Peck's eyebrows. Can you believe the nerve of me?

At 4:30 in the morning, I woke up, rolled over to the computer that sometimes lives in my bed, and (true story) e-mailed myself some thoughts that, at the time, seemed important to remember: "Gregory Peck named his only two children Gregory Peck's Left Eyebrow and Gregory Peck's Right Eyebrow. This is absolutely true. The fact that he actually had five children, all with normal human names, remains Gregory Peck's greatest lament."

Aaaaand in Limited Runs:

Harvey is playing at the Grand Illusion, and Steel of Fire Warriors 2010 A.D. is their late night. Late night at the Egyptian is Labyrinth (———>). Central Cinema has some movie called In Search Of about people doing sex to each other. Sex!!! The Short Films of the Brothers Quay is at SIFF Cinema. And at Northwest Film Forum there's the usual Secret Sunday Matinee (last one, I think!), the much-anticipated Flaming Lips movie Christmas on Mars, and Obscene: A Portrait of Barney Rosset and Grove Press, of which Paul Constant says:

The story of Barney Rosset’s Grove Press—publisher of works by William S. Burroughs, Henry Miller, Jack Kerouac, and many other beat-era giants—is one of those miraculous adventures that can only happen in America. As a tiny independent press, Grove published books that inspired the American imagination, titillated the American groin, and roused American Puritanical indignation. Parts of this documentary, especially the interviews with literary figures like Erica Jong, Morgan Entrekin, and Gore Vidal, are fascinating stuff, although it should be noted that almost everybody here has a face that only the publishing industry could love. General audiences will probably be shocked to learn about the legal battles Rosset had to fight to keep his books from being banned, and lit fanatics will find a few interesting bits of trivia here and there. But even with sex, drugs, and a couple of bombings, the narrative drags, and all the cheesy computer animation of words rising off the page can’t save the documentary from its own funereal tone.