Snap Judgment: Memorial, but probably not memorable

In about 30 hours I'm off to New York for the weekend, so that I might have a chance to balance out the usual pop-cultural surfeits of L.A. with such high-cultural touchstones as the Met, Guggenheim, and public urination. But before all that, I must leave our devoted readership (all six of you) with some thoughtful words on this weekend's release slate.

Now, without further ado (the existing ado notwithstanding)...


X-Men 3: The Last Stand (rated PG-13, directed by Brett Ratner, written by Simon Kinberg and Zak Penn)

So, as I understand it, in this one there's some kind of a vaccine that you can take to stop being a mutant. Personally, if I were a mutant (and really, who's to say I'm not?), my decision whether or not to take "The Cure" would probably hinge upon how cool my mutant costume was. Because, you know, some of the costumes are pretty awesome, and I assume that the lease on them expires as soon as you're de-mutantized. Sure, you get your $50 refundable deposit back, but that's not going to be much comfort. (By the way, yes, the vaccine really is just called "The Cure" even though, as far as I know, it has little or nothing to do with goth-pop or Robert Smith.)

But what I'm really wondering is what the prime-time commercials for The Cure would be like. If it comes from a big pharmaceutical company, you know they'd have them.

Are you frequently tired or distracted in your job or your home life, unable to focus on the things that matter to you? Do you get angry when there's no reason to? Do you find that lately, you can't even hug or comfort a loved one without sucking their life energy? When you forget to wear sunglasses, do high-intensity laser beams shoot out of your eyes? If you said "yes" to one or more of these questions, you're not alone. Like millions of other Americans, you may be suffering from a congenital medical condition known as "mutantness." Last year, mutantness alone accounted for 61% of all steel-claw-related deaths, 45% of unwanted mind-readings, and at least a hundred instances of running through walls.

But thanks to The Cure, there is hope.

Depending on your medical history, you may be eligible to begin treatment immediately and put an end to the unnecessary sleepless nights, panic attacks, and inadvertent control of magnetic fields. Talk to your doctor about The Cure. You may begin to feel better quickly; however, in order to make sure that all mutant genes are killed, you should complete the course of medication. The Cure is not for everyone. Side effects may include drowsiness, headache, and dry mouth, and typically occur in less than 10% of patients. If you are planning to destroy the entire world's supply of vaccines in order to create a tyrannical new world order in which evil mutants are dominant, or if you are pregnant or may become pregnant, then The Cure may not be for you.


An Inconvenient Truth (documentary, rated PG, directed by Davis Guggenheim)

Okay, so Al Gore may be one of my favorite people ever (bolstered by the fact that one of my other favorite people ever, Sarah Vowell, wrote a brilliant essay about his geekiness)... but this is Snap Judgment and no one is immune. That being said, I'm very glad he invented the internet so I could talk to everyone about his movie. Which is, well, as far as I can tell, 100 or so minutes of him lecturing. That doesn't mean I'm not going to see it, but it also doesn't mean I'm going to stay awake for the whole thing without some chemical assistance courtesy of Starbucks. I mean, even Syriana put me right out, and that was all fictionalized and had explosions and Amanda Peet. I wonder what I'd do in a movie where I was lecturing for 100 minutes. Sure, I could talk about something as important and tragically overlooked as the demise of the natural world as we know it, but let's face it, I'd probably be more likely to use the time to talk about the relative merits of the first two seasons of Alias vs. the first two seasons of Buffy and how Alias was a lot more consistent on a week-to-week basis and delivered a more coherent overall plotline whereas Buffy was more imaginative and ambitious with some of its individual episodes and ultimately made you care more about its characters. Then I might segue into explaining why Gilmore Girls and 24, despite being polar opposites in every conceivable way, are absolutely equally important to me and why I could never be forced to choose one over the other. Ultimately, I'm guessing my movie would be outdone financially by even the destined-to-be-modest grosses of Al's movie. But you know? I think I'd have better slideshows.