"Rated R for "RAAAAAR!"*

300, with Gerard Butler and Lena Headey. Ok, got to get this out of the way...I just noticed, Headey has a tattoo of a lotus on her back. Whoa. Ok, I won't speak to people trying to force some political symbolism upon the plot, nor whether the violence and sexuality of the movie detracts from its value as a historical (-ly referential?) text, nor even to the quality of the choreography and stylization being better than the majority of martial arts movies. I'm going to throw this out there, that 300 might be a very yogic movie. That is, Leonidas became, over time in my mind as I watched the movie, more and more like what Arjuna becomes by the end of the Bhagavad Gita. He (and his wife, Gorgo) decide their actions based on what basically amounts to dharma, what is right in a very deep sense, he (and the Spartans) are selfless on a basic level and subsume themselves to what they consider their dharmic path as soldiers, and they take a simple joy in doing their absolute best without being attached to the outcome. I could go on with closer examples and details, but I'm sure I've already bored someone out there, so I'll leave it at that.
(also: laconic wit)

Idiocracy, with Luke Wilson and Maya Rudolph. Oh man, was this stupid or was this stupid (it was stupid.). It tried pretty hard to be funny, and somehow the special effects were surprisingly good in a cartoony way, but mostly it just fell flat. The concept is vaguely interesting, and Kevin has already spoken to that, so I'll just leave this with a vague, if apathetic, admonition not to watch it.

Over the Hedge, with a bevy of famous voices and whatnot. Kind of a ditto on this one, though I also vaguely wonder whether I've become jaded to kiddie movies. But...no, I think this one just pretty much also fell flat, as it really didn't make any effort to rise up out of a stereotypical moral-of-the-story plot and characters. The ending did make me laugh a little, though, I mean, when is a van crashing into a house aerobatically not funny?
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"Secretary star Maggie Gyllenhaal is in final talks to replace Katie Holmes in the Batman Begins sequel. "
-Ok, tell if I'm crazy, but I'm sure there's at least three other people who would immediately imagine Gyllenhaal getting spanked by Batman after reading that quote. And like it.

*see Phil Villarreal's fun review ("The Spartans are a super-human elite squad of lumberjack pirates who were trained by the the great-great-grandpa of Chuck Norris' paternal ancestor" - it's so true!).