Killer grimaces aside, this movie seriously sucks, don't watch it. Except the part where it (sort of) disassembles everything you know about the nature of morality. You should watch that part twice.

The Secret Message

Early on, a character named Goat is bitten by a demon. He starts to turn into one, because this whole script is clearly a zombie movie that was hastily rewritten into an Aliens knockoff. When he realizes that he's DOOMed, he decides to save his friends by slamming his face into a wall until he dies.

Universal
At least I think that's what's happening. They kinda forgot to light this scene.

Later we learn that when a demon "infects" you, it can go one of two ways: If you're an inherently bad person, it turns you into a monster, but if you're an inherently good person, it gives you superhuman reflexes and a healing factor. According to the movie, this is because it accesses the genetic code of your soul.

This is where shit gets real: Goat was genetically predisposed toward being a bad person, but he was willing to sacrifice himself for the greater good. Karl Urban's John Reaper, on the other hand, says he's "done terrible things," but when he gets infected by the magic-demon serum, he gets really good at playing first-person shooters and saves the day. That means that Reaper is a good person on the inside (promise!); he just doesn't do anything good. Goat (some side character) was born shitty, but overcame that shittiness to become selfless enough to make the ultimate sacrifice by head-banging himself to death.

Basically, Doom makes the exact same point David Wong made last year, only this movie doesn't realize it's making that point, because if it did, Goat would be the hero of the whole damn story, and not just the lone hero of my aching heart.

Universal
I'll never forget you, Goat. And good job in House of Cards.

From the perspective of a writer preparing to write a story within the existing Batman mythology, the gay subtext is hard to ignore: The guy is a reclusive billionaire leading a double life revolving primarily around other men and fetish gear. Sure, you're not wrong if you write him straight, but it makes more sense to say "Hey, maybe sometimes there are cocks in him."

DC Comics
Obviously I'm using this picture.

Enter Joel Schumacher. Aside from his use of surface-level gay stuff (the celebration of the male form in the outfits with massive codpieces; the fact that every fight scene looks like it was lifted from musical theater), he takes it a step further and makes overcoming heterosexuality a major part of Bruce's story arc.

Sure, Bruce Wayne has a girlfriend in this movie named [didn't catch it] and played by [who gives a shit she has like two minutes of screen time], but she's mostly presented as something he has to figure out how to ignore. Every time they're together, he's making excuses to keep the relationship from moving forward: "I'm not the marrying kind," he says, "There are parts of me you wouldn't understand."

Warner Brothers
Ladies: If a guy says that to you, it's not because he's Batman.

But the more telling part is how Batman deals with Poison Ivy's mind-control pheromones. Through the movie, Wayne manages to overcome not only Ivy's seduction, but the sexual advances of the aforementioned smoking-hot blonde supermodel, and the whole time he seems confused as to why he's sexually attracted to Poison Ivy at all. When Batman explains his suspicions to Robin, the younger hero is all [doofy voice] "You've got some real issues with women!"[/doofy voice] The big scene before the final battle shows Batman convincing Robin to suppress his heterosexuality in order to do battle with her. If that doesn't convince you, there's also the fact that George Clooney said he portrayed Batman as gay on purpose. That might be relevant.

My point is that while Joel Schumacher made a terrible movie, that might only be because he was trying to do something that's almost impossible to pull off. So partial credit for you, Joel Schumacher.

Chris Weeks/Hulton Archive/Getty Images
And good job on House of Cards.

Why is this stupid show so successful?

The Secret Message

The premise of Two and a Half Men is a metaphor for the two different kinds of masculinity the modern kid has to choose between. On the one hand, we have Charlie Sheen: a hard-drinking, lazy, womanizing misogynist who's successful, handsome, morally bankrupt, and completely miserable. On the other hand, we have Jon Cryer, who's effeminate, weak-willed, respectful/submissive to women (depending on the episode), and ... also completely miserable. Yup: He has no good role models to teach him how to become a man, and he is forced to go out into the world to find guidance on his own.

CBS
Miley Cyrus is his best bet, apparently.

It seems like this might be screwing him over. Jake was portrayed as precocious, but in later seasons he became kind of a dipshit. Either he's suppressing his own intelligence out of frustration at his life's inherent lack of direction, or making one of the characters really stupid just allowed the writers more room for doofy jokes. It's sorta unclear how much of this was intended.

Because this show isn't just dumb, it's also bad. That isn't always the case. Some "dumb" movies are actually pretty good despite their apparent stupidity, like ...

Meanwhile, the villain, Ma-Ma, is one of the more sympathetic characters we meet: She became a drug lord because her pimp tried to murder her, and fighting back was the only way to stay alive. Her biggest crime (in Dredd's eyes) is manufacturing "slo-mo," a chemical that "makes you feel like time is moving at 1 percent of normal speed." It's basically Bullet Time, the drug.

Lionsgate
It's literally impossible to be a danger to society from your bubble bath.

I'm not saying that Dredd is the secret antagonist -- it's actually more complicated than that. Dredd wants peace, and order, and law, but the only way he knows how to solve problems is violence. Since he also has the biggest guns, that forces everyone else to resort to violence, too, and things have been this way for so long that no one character can turn it around. The best example is at the end, when Ma-Ma tells Dredd that she has rigged the apartment building with bombs, and if she dies, a device on her wrist will transmit a signal, blowing them all up. Dredd shoots her in the stomach and throws her off the balcony, hoping that the signal from the device won't be strong enough to make it through the concrete. He takes an irresponsibly huge gamble, putting all the innocent lives he fought to save in danger, based on no information, because he just doesn't know any way to solve problems other than "shoot at them until they go away."

Awesome, right? And yet Silver Linings Playbook gets nominated for best fucking picture. This is a broken world.

The Secret Meaning

Zardoz is about how the traditional nuclear family is the only thing that can save the world from the perils of free love.

In the movie, the "immortals" have perfected technology that allows them control over the aging process, so they of course keep themselves in their mid-20s and just fuck around all day.

The "immortals" represent carefree, loose sex. They have no desire to procreate and specifically designed their "tabernacle" (the big crystal that, I think, keeps them immortal) so that they could never leave, and they just sit around wearing awful hippie clothes forever. The problem is that they can't get boners (there's a whole scene where scientists just look at drawings of cocks and shrug their shoulders), until Sean Connery shows up and sweats all over them, introducing them again to mortality and procreation. Seriously, when he sweats on the "apathetics" (immortals who have grown bored and stand there staring into the distance), they wake up and immediately try to fuck him.

20th Century Fox
Sean Connery's sweat is rad, you guys.

And then ... and then all this happens:

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

Until finally, Connery gets laid, has a son, grows old, and dies. All while never getting up from his comfy chair or even breaking eye contact with you.

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

20th Century Fox

There's also a giant stone head that flies around vomiting guns on people and telling them that "the penis is evil," but I don't think that's important. So there we go. The point Zardoz makes is that the family unit is the backbone of society, and if we lose track of that, we'll all become bored hippies, trapped in the prison of our commune, longing for a death that can never come.

Right? I mean, I don't agree with that message, but I've solved you, right, Zardoz? We're done? Can I have my dreams back?

JF Sargent is staring at his feeds on Twitter, Tumblr, and Facebook, just trying to make some sense of it.