Hell Plaza Googleplex

You can applaud recent movie biographies like Walk the Line and Capote if you wish. I was totally bored by them, but it doesn't matter. It's easy to show us a biography of someone's life. Here's my point: Movies don't challenge us anymore. They don't grip our national consciousness and dare us to look at ourselves and say, "My God, look how screwed up we are." Movies don't mock us—they don't shake us up. I remember the last great film that made me feel like that 10 years ago: Citizen Ruth. I can't think of anything more recently that made a social comment or that really blew my mind. And now is the perfect time—when states are banning abortion and politics are steeped so highly in religious ideals. We're becoming the same kind of nation we purport to despise, where fanaticism rules the roost, and religious smugness turns dangerous. Have we all gone insane? But our movies don't reflect it anymore, and that's OK, because finally we have a big-screen version of Bewitched, with I Dream of Jeannie coming right down the pike. Where are the Cuckoo's Nests, the Rockys, the Godfathers? While Hollywood cranks out sequel after sequel, remake after remake, trotting out tired cliches and warmed-over scripts and idiotic star vehicles, the only place to find fresh, dramatic, funny and genuinely engaging stories is on TV. How motherfuckingly ironic it is that the movies have become TV, while TV has become the last bastion for original thinking?