All the Things That I Have Seen

1. Premonition (2007)

I have always loved the above painting, Las Meninas by Spanish painter Diego Velázquez. So when I spied a painting that looked a lot like it midway through Premonition, I had high hopes that it would be a sign that the movie was actually going to turn out to be more intelligent and sophisticated than I thought it was. However, it wasn't.

In fact, the movie was quite dumb -- even by the standards of the average Sandra Bullock movie. Yet another “supernatural” thriller by a Rod Serling wannabe with perhaps the most offensive scene being the one in which it was implied that the widowed female protagonist deserved her fate because she stopped going to church. Theological misogyny and stupid sci-fi tricks... Good times!

2. The Simpsons Movie (2007)

At long last a summer movie that does not suck. (Apart from the one about the rat who can cook, of course.) However, one would hardly argue that this movie was based on the most original of ideas -- even by Simpsons standards. And apart from a brief glimpse of Bart Simpson's private parts -- which wasn't exactly the type of thing that I wanted to see anywhere, much less on the big screen -- there isn't a whole lot here that one would not see on the small screen.