Snap Judgment

Consistency? Reliability? Snap Judgment craves not these things. It wasn't here last week and it might not be here next, so enjoy it while you can.


2012 (rated PG-13, directed by Roland Emmerich, written by Emmerich & Harald Kloser)

Remember how when you were a kid, if your mom bought you a great new toy and you broke it, she'd just buy you a new one that was twice as expensive? No? Well, that's apparently the parenting technique that the Sony Pictures executives were raised with, since they're always giving Roland Emmerich more and more money to make big-ass disaster movies regardless of how badly the last one performed. If 2012 flops, we'll have to steel ourselves for a $600 million mega-epic in which the entire galaxy gets magnificently destroyed -- and in case they're already taking pitches for that, I think it would be pretty awesome if Neptune broke loose from its orbit, strapped on a bunch of rocket-boosters, and started ramming into all the other planets. (But in the third act twist -- lo and behold -- Pluto, that underdog of underdogs, rides to the rescue and saves the day and is rewarded with the reinstatement of its planetary status. We'll figure out the rest later. I see Taylor Lautner as Halley's Comet.) Anyway, I know that a lot of people are pointing to how ridiculous 2012 is going to seem once that year passes apocalypse-free; but I'm forced to look on the more-pessimistic side and worry that, if all this Mayan death shit really does come true, the movie that pre-emptively chronicled it all wasn't made by someone cool like Spielberg or that District 9 guy, but by the dude who brought us 10,000 B.C. Talk about adding insult to injury.



Fantastic Mr. Fox (rated PG, directed by Wes Anderson, screenplay by Anderson & Noah Baumbach, based on the book by Roald Dahl)

George Clooney stars in yet another heist movie! This is really a bummer for Steven Soderbergh, who I've heard had planned a fourth Ocean's movie but was going to do it all stop-motion with cutesy animals, just to keep things fresh. Now he'll have to come up with a different approach. Maybe Ocean's 14: Ocean's On Ice? Or a "reimagining" of Ocean's 11 with Lady Gaga in the lead and Carrie Prejean as the loathsome casino owner? There are a lot of ways to go with this, is what I'm saying. Don't let that damn hipster and his furry menagerie get you down, Sodes.



Pirate Radio (rated R, written and directed by Richard Curtis)

So. This movie is rated R, while 2012 is rated PG-13. 2012 is about the entire fucking world getting blown to pieces and every single fucking human being on Earth dying a horrible death (except for a few past-their-prime movie stars and Chiwetel "gonna need to do lots of experimental stage work to make up for this" Ejiofor). Pirate Radio is about a boat that broadcast some rock music in England in the 60s.

Do we need any further evidence that our ratings/moral decency standards are a little screwed up in America? I mean, for crying out loud. 2012 should clearly have gotten a "G". Everything in that movie is true! All that stuff's going to happen eventually! It's just highly realistic depictions of natural phenomena. Whereas Pirate Radio has (a) sex and (b) loud music about sex. That's NC-17 for sure. When will the MPAA learn? I ask you.