Two film capsules:

Superman Returns - Super shit never ends. Stinker, big time, and yes I liked the first movie from '78 (which this is both a remake of and sequel to), but first of all, Ja-lel ain't Christ. He's a former soap actor who got lucky. Kate Bosworth is a boring Lois Lane. I'd rather have seen a Schindler's List styled humanitarian epic with Kitty Kowalski (Parker Posey) in the place of Oscar Schindler instead of this rank, boring, CGI rendered turd. Posey is great. Still waiting for Superman.

The Hills Have Eyes - A remake that works! SERIOUSLY. The original was like an SNL skit meets the Texas Chainsaw Massacre in the New Mexican desert (i.e. pretty crappy), but this new one, from that Frenchy who did High Tension, is like the artistic height of American b-movie crapola. Good points: Hot aussie chick from Lost as pissy teen, impish ultrapassivist cell phone salesman democrat guy who smokes, Big Bob (aka Buffalo Bill from Silence of the Lambs) as the good ol' gun toting ex-cop dad, the great and underused Kathleen Quinlan as a ditzy God-fearing mom, two German Shepherds--Beauty and Beast--and an opening title sequence (a montage of nuclear explosions, pics of birth defect deformities and an old country chestnut by Webb Pierce) that's as exploitive and COOL as anything I have seen in a major studio film in '06. The film itself? Sort'a Texas Chainsaw Massacre crossed with National Lampoon's Vacation crossed with Sam Peckinpah's Straw Dogs, with an abundance of blood and eye-for-eye retribution. Oh yeah, it's also an allegory, but who cares? Final verdict: Much better than Hostel.

ROCK ON!