If You Put Butter And Salt On It, It Tastes Like Salty Butter

I saw two movies over the weekend.  One, 21 Grams, starring Benicio Del Toro, Naomi Watts, and Sean Penn — who is looking more and more like Al Pacino with every film — was quite good, even if you had figured out what was going on before the movie was halfway done.  The other was, unfortunately, The Butterfly Effect, starring acting-school reject Ashton Kutcher.  To say that he can't act would be an understatement, and the film was just laughably straining to be a serious film.  To clarify a bit more, I saw the director's cut, which supposedly has a different ending than the theatrical release.  (Spoiler warning!) In this version, Kutcher's character returns to the moment before his birth and kills himself, an action that was badly telegraphed by the dialog after about 30 minutes.  If only the same thing couldn't happen to Kutcher himself, and then we'd be saved from his attempts at acting.

However, in honour of this movie, I have gone through all the films being set for summer release and, ignoring any films that are clearly not aimed at me (kiddie flicks, chick flicks, &c.), as well as ones that I know nothing about, I have come up with the big list of summer movies I'd only see at gun-point (but I'd still have to think about it first):

• I, Robot: Will Smith has one character he plays in every movie.  Add to that the fact that this movie is doing things to Asimov's corpse that I won't go into here, and you have a definite entry onto this list.
• King Arthur: From producer Bruckheimer, the man who brought us Pearl Harbor, Armageddon, Gone in 60 Seconds, Con Air, both Bad Boys, Enemy of the State, and Kangaroo Jack.  I don't think I need to say anything else.
• Catwoman:  Anyone who saw the very first teaser (made, admittedly, from unfinished footage) can attest to how badly this is going to suck.  Not even Halle Berry's cleavage — which really should get co-star billing — can save this one.
• Anchorman: I don't like Will Ferrell;  I don't find him funny.  About the only emotion that his acting causes in me is a profound urge to not be my normal non-violent self and punch him in the face.  I'll stop now before I start foaming at the mouth.
• White Chicks: Take my comment about Anchorman, replace "Will Ferrell" with "the Wayons brothers" and "punch in the mouth" with "punch in the mouth repeatedly".  Besides, does anyone seriously think they look like white chicks even with all that makeup?  No, don't bother answering that. It was a rhetorical question.
• The Manchurian Candidate: The original was a creepy suspense film about soliders who come back from Korea brainwashed to be Soviet assassins, and was probably the best film that Ol' Blue Eyes ever did.  The current one looks like, well, crap.  You wouldn't be able to get me near this one for any amount of money.
• Thunderbirds: I've made an exception to the rule of keeping movies not aimed at me off the list with this one.  Essentially they've taken a cheesy British puppet series, and turned it into Spy Kids.  Another part of my childhood dies.
• Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story: I'm loathe to admit that I saw Zoolander, but I have to to tell this little factoid:  In it, Ben Stiller played a model who did all his jobs with a single expresssion on his face.  Whenever I see one of his movies, I can't think of how accurate that was.
• Anacondas:  The first one was fairly terrible, so I have only one thing to say here: why?
• Alien Vs. Predator: The last two Aliens movies were fairly bad, and the less said about second Predator, the better.  Unfortunately, this movie doesn't appear to be a sudden change in direction, quality-wise.  I could, of course, be wrong.
• Exorcist: The Beginning:  There have been three Exorcist films since 1973, and only one of them was worth watching.  This prequel, directed by the man who brought us Driven, Deep Blue Sea, and Nightmare on Elm Street 4, probably won't reverse the trend.

Actually, I lied a little;  I'll likely make the last one a rental once it moves out of new release status, just to see how bad it is.  It should be noted that the above was all the opinion of an admittedly pretentious film viewer; your mileage may vary.

Moving back to The Butterfly Effect, what is it with casting actors for roles as younger versions of other actors based, not on whether or not they look at all similar, but whether they have the same hair cut?  How many people here have the exact same hair cut they had when they were seven?  Be honest now.

The title was originally going to be a quote from The Apprenticeship of Duddy Kravitz, but, when even I couldn't find the one I wanted, I decided it would just be too difficult.  Instead, you get a relatively easy one.  One point.