You know, when I was a wee lad, I seem to remember that if you wanted to make some kind of a "point" in film, you might be seen to do it with wit, subtlety and perhaps a modicum of grace. Nowadays, on the other hand, the preferred method is to simply hit your audience repeatedly over the head with the same idea for about 45 minutes or until they walk out, whichever comes first.

I saw Reclaim Your Brain at noon, which was a humourless and painfully one-dimensional tale of a man's struggle against the television ratings system. Yes, that's the story. What a useless piece of nothing this thing is. Somebody actually made this, and other people bothered to see it, and at least two more people bothered to give a fuck about it one way or the other. I left about ten minutes before the end because they'd started late (partially due to a nicely understated little verbal slap-fight between the programming assistant and the director before the show) and I had missed the fact that I had 14 minutes to commute the Scoshe-Elgin corridor. I made it, but barely in time, and then L'Age de Tenebres started and I left after 45 minutes. The film repeated the exact same point, over and over again, in scene couplets, with no variation or progression of the idea at all, just different comic executions of it. Denys Arcand is worthless and should be removed from the cinema.

Nobody was at the fucking thing, though, which was nice. I pretty much got the balcony of the Elgin all to myself - which made me feel, temporarily, like I was in an ancient movie house watching a venerated classic unspool in front of me, back when there was still a bit of lustre left in this thing. The new version is all plastic - good plastic, solidly made, but lacking fibre.

I tell you what though - we saw Dr. Plonk this morning, and that was freaking great. Not just good; great. It was like a movie D-Coc and J-Szp would have made; in fact, as far as I'm concerned, they should go ahead and make it anyway. They could call it Dr. Plonktuous. D-Coc missed this one; he's been in every screening with me since Monday afternoon so it's a shame he couldn't make it out for such an obviously D-Cockish film.

We're not so much down to the dregs here, as down to the point where you can suss out a man's game pretty damn quickly. If a flick don't have it, it don't have it.