It's a great place to catch up on things because at any given time, there are tons of "festivals" going on--westerns, Hitchcock, Italian films, whatever.

Just as an example, here are what my favorite Latin quarter cinemas are playing just this week:
Action Écoles
Grand Action
Le Champo
Reflet Médicis
Ursulines

I've seen 84 of the so-called modern classics, several of which rate among my least-favorite movies. And I've seen all but 3 of the so-called all-time classics, with the exceptions being Titanic, which I refuse to watch, Raise The Red Lantern, which I've never gotten around to, and The World of Apu, which isn't available on DVD in the US.

How many people do you casually kill in Assassin's Creed? Answer: 0. How many people killed in Kickass: 0. All fictional deaths. Of course they're different media, but people have made that claim about shooter games. Were you upset by the slaughter in Kill Bill?

I am aware that it is all fictional death, David. I understand that they didn't actually murder an actor on camera, and that I was not watching a snuff film.

I'm talking about how it's presented.

I like Kill Bill, and Fight Club, and James Bond movies, and Braveheart, and the Godfather movies. Though in each of those, there may have been individual deaths that made me wince, or even disturbed me.

Sean, are you a fan at all of Tarentino or John Woo? The violence of Kick-Ass seemed on that level to me - kinda' cartoonish in its absurdity.

How was it casual? They were killing bad guys. Often to avoid being killed by them.

The guy handcuffed to the steering wheel of a car in a car compactor died screaming, helpless, and begging for mercy from the "heroes". And it was played for laughs, like many of the murders in this movie. I did not find that remotely funny. Nor even the tiniest bit heroic.

The woman in the red slutty dress at Rasul's? She was murdered while unarmed and attempting to flee the scene.

Batman is almost always stopping somebody from trying to kill him or somebody else. He does it without murdering the criminals in question, as do most superheroes. When some "superhero" does start killing criminals in the comics, it is usually presented as something bad, and disturbing that must be stopped, or that has a profound negative effect on the hero in question, usually leading to his own downfall or death.

This movie was presented as "what if real, everyday people tried to become superheroes." That's not being a superhero. That's serial mass murder, and if some real person started really doing that, I would want the police to stop them.

Right. I will say that some deaths made me a bit uncomfortable, but overall, besides the fact that there was rampant, bloody violence committed by a child, the violence itself wasn't that different from other movies of its ilk.

None of it felt cartoonish to me, though it was frequently played for laughs.

I felt like there was nothing heroic about any of the "heroes" of this movie.

Sean,

I'm not sure we were supposed to find much of the behavior heroic in the film. I thought that I was supposed to be left with "man, that's a really fucked up movie" and not the notion I was supposed to respect the choices the main characters made.

I said before the characters did some colossally stupid things on all sides. This was not close to anything that would happen in reality.

I actually can't remember the woman in the red dress, but car compacter guy was a murderer. From Big Daddy's perspective, he died like the other henchmen in the organization. None were spared.

Raise The Red Lantern

Cor, I highly recommend this, if only for its sheer gorgeousness (if that's not a word, it should be).

There are definitely films on those lists that I dislike tremendously, notably Forrest Gump.

Favorite comments from my 1994 diary:

Forrest Gump -- "Strong performances but overall a depressing, not uplifting, film. Schmaltzy. The quick changes of music (perhaps to sell a great soundtrack?) were extremely distracting."

Pulp Fiction -- "Very influenced by French film, notably Godard. The best script that I can remember. Brilliant."

I have a soft spot for Titanic because my friend's husband shot it and won his Oscar for it. But it's a terrible film on many levels. The cinematography was cool, though!

I distinctly remember sitting in the theater watching Forrest Gump and knowing that it was a much beloved film and that it would win Oscars and thinking what utter crap it was.

I have a soft spot for Titanic because I liked it. I saw it when I was living in Paris and thus really avoided lots of the hype that I believe occured here. (Ditto for The Blair Witch Project, which I think suffered even more from hype-syndrome.) I'm not even sure I knew how long it was going to be (or I might not have gone to see it).

Titanic is gross for romanticizing a huge disaster, but it was also really, really pretty. Just to see the virtual rebuild of the ship was eye candy. Plus Kate Winslet nude -- always a plus in my book. And the costumes were gorgeous.

The scene with the band playing still makes me cry every time, too.

Titanic is gross for romanticizing a huge disaster

Huh, I never would've made that critique. Most romance seems to prefer a dramatic historical backdrop like Casablanca/WWII, or Atonement and WWI. It really is Life or Death, and the World is at Stake.