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I got to go to the first public screening of this on Monday, and holy holy holy crap.

This movie is absolutely incredible (har!). I'll even go out on a limb to say it's the best pixar movie yet. I got to talk to the director and got his autograph on a poster too, in an unrelated side note.

Pixar movies always have some of everything and something for everyone, but this one had MORE of everything and MORE for everyone. On top of that, in many ways it could be a standalone action movie, whereas previous pixar movies had to support their action with sight gags and comedy - they've evolved to being able to keep the viewer on the edge of his or her seat with straight-up action.

I'm trying not to say too much because Brad Bird asked us not to give anything away, but I'll say that the preview, as awesome as it is, really doesn't scratch the surface. Right from the opening scene I was laughing, and straight through I couldn't stop. Even the tense suspenseful parts, I found myself laughing at the sheer *goodness* of it, if that makes sense.

I can't wait to see it again on Nov 5!

the previous commenter, Mike, wondered if this show was written by white supremacists (no, "supremists" is not the correct spelling), simply because they named the principal "onyx blackman", and he happened to be a black man.

Mike seems to have missed the point. this show wasn't written to delicately handle interpersonal, racial, or societal issues. it was written to be funny and shocking, and in that the writers were very successful.

they broke every rule they could find, offended as many people as possible, and made it as obvious as they could so they couldn't be accused of being "supremists".

if nothing else, laugh at how many ways they can come up with to offend people in one episode. i'm personally just amazed by the number of great jokes in every episode.

This movie was engaging, complicated and intricate, and well thought out and put together. I still don't think I'd put it on the top 250 list, but I'd definitely give it a 7/10.

My one qualm in this was realism. It was very realistic in many senses, and the characters were realistically portrayed, but it's the minor details that bugged me while I watched. My best example for this is Tom's apparent invincibility. It seemed like every time he stepped out of a doorway, phone booth, room, building, car, etc etc etc, he was getting punched in the face, and then kicked in the head, and then punched and slapped around and just generally having the crap kicked out of him. Repeatedly. Okay, I can believe that someone in his line of work would get beat up sometimes, especially if he's not a big guy. But you *have* to show some bruises if you get beat up that badly. The best we got was some short-lived blood, and once a small split in his lip (which vanishes very quickly). In general, two seconds after the baddies finish knocking him around he's back on his feet and totally fine, not even disheveled.

The other problem I had was more with me than with the movie, but when someone is standing right next to you or in front of you or over you with a gun three inches from your body *telling* you that you're about to die, the least you can do is grab the gun and hit the guy a few times and see if he drops the gun. Everyone in this movie seemed too afraid of the all-powerful handgun held half an arm's-length away, and unwilling to even try to escape its narrow range of effectiveness. It could be that I'm too well trained and am overanalyzing the potential combat situations which were to further the plot and not act as plot themselves, and it's true that this isn't a Jet Li action thriller, but the least they could do would be to take away the possibility of stopping the gun-weilder by having them step back one pace.

In all I enjoyed the film and marveled at its intricate construction and effective visual style, and everyone delivered excellent performances. My qualms with it are primarily superficial, so although this movie in my opinion isn't top 250 material it is still very good.