Vonnegut has always been one of my favorite authors, particularly since he was categorized by my high school as a “Contemporary Classic.” Thus, I could read plenty of Vonnegut and have it count toward my required reading. A Man Without a Country is one of his more recent works, and is really more a collection of essays. I didn’t appreciate this book as much as I would have liked because there was plenty of anti-Bush and Bush-equals-Hitler rhetoric. I know that Vonnegut was always more of a Socialist than anything else, but I just felt that this baseless blaming is and was above his intellect.

Firmin is an interesting story of a rat who spends his infancy gnawing on a large book and quickly learning to read books. He spends much of his early life living in a bookstore, reading every book he can get access to. He spends his nights eating in a risqué movie theatre. All these books and movies lead to many grand ideas, but in the end, Firmin remains just a rat, detached from humankind. Finally, Firmin finds a human to bond with, but catastrophe befalls him on multiple levels as he loses his friend and the demolition of his home — Boston’s Scollay Square — destroys all that he knows. The book is a sad story of longing, told from a truly unique perspective.

Any movie based on a Kieslowski movie (“Blind Chance” in this case) has got to be good, and this movie is no exception.

I’m not a Tom Cruise fan, but that has nothing to do with my disdain for this horrid remake of War of the Worlds.

Acting in this movie? Meh.

Special effects were the huge draw for this film, but even the special effects, which are Spielberg’s specialty, weren’t that great, unless you prefer alien ships that look like huge barstools.

This movie was apparently a spoof on Australian horror movies or something to that effect. I am unfamiliar with that genre, and the movie on its own is just plain awful.