| title/category | Sin City | Palindromes | Oldboy | Save The Green Planet | The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy | Star Wars: The Revenge of the Sith | House of Wax4 | Madagascar6 | Mr. and Mrs. Smith | Howl’s Moving Castle6 | The Adventures of Shark Boy and Lava Girl6 | Me and You and Everyone We Know | The World | Batman Begins | Princess Racoon | The War of the Worlds | The Fantastic Four6 | Charlie and the Chocolate Factory |
| Director | Robert Rodriguez et al. | Todd Solondz | Chan-wook Park | Joo-Hwan Jeong | Garth Jennings | George Lucas | Jaume Collet-Serra | Eric Darnell and Tom McGarth | Doug Liman | Hayao Miyazaki | Robert Rodriguez | Miranda July | Jia Zhangke | Christopher Nolan | Seijan Suzuki | Steven Spielberg | Tim Story | Tim Burton |
| Age Inappropriate Casting? | Bruce Willis as cop in his 60s | Jennifer Jason Leigh as 13 year old | na | Yun-Shik Baek as an industrialist in his millions | na | na | na | na | na | Jena Malone as Jean Simmons’ mother | Racer Rodriguez as “screenwriter” | na7 | na7 | Neither Michael Cane nor Gary Oldman age noticibly in 20 years | na | na | multiple 12 | Christopher Lee as the non-undead |
| Amputations? | Multiple, almost uncountable1 | There’s a flipper girl and a babyectomy | Several teeth, one hand, a tongue | An arm, and plenty of teasing2 | Decapitation | Nine3 | Four 5 | Well, where do you think those steaks come from? | None, but Pitt threatened to pull some guy’s thumbs off with pliers | Braid gets chopped off and fed to the fire | Lava Girl loses leg in molten state | none, but8 | none, but11 | surprisingly, none | none | tripod tentacle made of alien metal gets chopped - by an axe | Guy gets his middle removed. | Wangdoodle gets hacked in half, licked15 |
| Medical Procedure with unforeseen complications? | Re-wangification operation results in jaundice, bad smell | Sometimes, the uterus gets stuck | Pacemaker surgery is totally a red herring | Benzine? Not a cure for coma. | Lemon juice provides food for thought | Multiple artificial limbs will make you wanna choke a bitch | If someone gets covered in wax, don’t try and pick the wax off | Giraffe’s rectal thermometer ends up in lion’s mouth | dominatrix session results in broken neck | Swallowing meteorite results in symbiotic relationship with Billy Crystal | Dropping girl into volcano does pretty much what it’s supposed to | Removal of bandage from hand results in epiphany about the world | Writing with a pen in your mouth gets friends to pay your debts | A psychologist dispenses gas that drives people insane. Get it? He’s a psychologist who drives people, like, insane? | the croak of the frog heals all. Wait, that was foreseen | removal of blood results in weird, veiny foliage | Exposure to cosmic rays brings out slight Latverian accent. | Dental check-up results in father-son reconciliation |
| Is there child rape? | Attempted | Yep | No, but multiple cases of incest | No | No | No | No | No | No | No | Just loss of innocence | no, but minor on minor (on minor) sex | No | No - no Robin in this one | No, but implied pre-pubescent golden shower | No | No | No |
| Is someone tied to a chair or other piece of furniture and tortured? | Yes | No | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Yes | Nothing good’s going to happen if you sit in that chair. | Yes | No 9 | No | Oh my, yes | yes | no | yes | yes | Ingenious Torture Method | Rubbing guy’s face in ground while driving | Todd Solondz | *Pretending* you’re going to extract teeth with hammer | Anal probe + electricity | Poetry | Grammar abuse | Traffic jam, smell of roadkill | Self-isolation on barren rock, surrounded by sharpened stakes and starving to death | Angelina Jolie’s Lips | Stair climbing | Neverending rollercoaster ride | Goldfish. Bag. Car roof | Having to play the African in the World pageant | Being shouted at by an angry Batman. | Forcing your parents to be human candelabras | Stephen Spielberg | Dr. Doom and Reed Richards trade taunts13 but nothing happens. Doom does bend back Reed’s finger a bit. | taunting your child with the promise of one candy bar per year |
| Mother figure | Dominatrix Prositute | Mama Sunshine! | The daughter is pretty mothering… | Mommy’s in a coma and it’s serious | Gigantic supercomputer watching cartoons | Mom who dies of heartbreak when kids are born | Dead insane wax sculptor | Sassy hippo | The only woman Vince Vaughn trusts | Sorceress in a wheelchair | Ocean of milk, mmmm | Mommy’s busy with her new boyfriend | Russian performer turned prostitute | Liam Neeson | Old Maid Virgen [Sic], Christian witch | Tom Cruise | In the comics Sue is the mother figure to Johnny, and in the movie she isn’t… | Crazy chick from “Fight Club” |
| Father figure | Good cop with whom you fall in love | Pedophile born again truck driver | Guy who has been imprisoned for 15 years | Detective with a keen sense of smell | World-weary planet builder who likes the “fiddly bits” | Corrupt old guy with hammy voice | Rogue surgeon | Cedric the Entertainer | An actor hired to give you away at the altar | Now that I think about it, there are no grown-up male figures in this movie. | Giant talking robot eyeballs and mouth | Shoe salesman who lights his hand on fire | Your over-protective boyfriend | Rather too many | The Fairest of them all! | Dockworker who hates hummus and calls you a “dick” | …and in the comics Reed is the father figure to Sue, and in the movie he isn’t. 14 | Dracula/Saruman/etc. |
| Is there a god? | Maybe, but you have to kill your way there | No, and you can never change | No, but if you’re very rich, you can make some poor shmuck think there’s a god | No, but the Old Testament? All true | No, but there might be a giant handkerchief… | No, but there’s life after death, provided you get training | Maybe, maybe not | Yes, dead ones hanging in the trees | nah | no | Your fourth-grade teacher | Yes, and he loves us all | Maybe some sort of nebulous, melancholy animating spirit | tk | All sorts of ‘em | Yeah, Morgan Freeman’s voice | Yes, and He’s a she. | Chocolate Ganesh! |
| Is there a dog? | Yes, a maneating one | Cuddles! | Little white fluffy thing that takes a header off a building | Yes, a maneating one | Hmmm. no dogs in this one | Chewbacca! | Yes, but at first it seems inanimate | Foosa! | No | Wheezy old dog that can’t climb stairs | plughounds | no. Why not? | no. | No, but there’s a firebreathing horse. | No, but there’s a ninja named Ostrich | Nope | Sparky-type firedog saved by The Thing. | That would be unsanitary |
| Wrangler | Whore wrangler | Tard wrangler | Octopus wrangler | Bee wrangler | Mouse wrangler | Verb wrangler | Face wrangler | Mane wrangler | Lip wrangler | Castle wrangler | Shark wrangler | Appliance wrangler | Simulacrum wrangler | Moustache wrangler | Backdrop wrangler | cliche wrangler | Unstable molecule wrangler. | sugar wrangler |
| Quote | “After that, I’ll go punch out god” | “I think we should talk about our relationship” | “I want to eat something alive” | “How many of the people that you have killed have turned out to be aliens? Only two!” | “Do you want a hug?” | “I remember what you told me about your mother and the sand people” | “It’s so cool you got that internship at InStyle Magazine!” | “It’s a cookbook!? | “This is such a good store!? | “Mmph mmph munch…” | “When we make our dreams a reality, reality becames a dream.”10 | “And we’ll keep on doing it back and forth with the same poop. Forever.” | “Death to Freckles! | “Do you want to see my mask? The inmates can’t stand it, but..” | “It is as I feared. The Frog of Paradise will not arrive in time.” | “Why are you such a dick” Why, indeed? | “Stop it, Doom!” | “This is the puppet infirmary and burn ward…it’s a new room.” |
| Who will always love you? | That ugly guy you picked up in the bar to protect you | Jesus. Oh, and your baby, of course. | Your brother. Because he liked fucking you, you sick chick. | A chubby, brainless tightrope walker with a Fellini-esque name. | That puffy nerd in the bathrobe | Darth Vader | wax-covered bodies | Your friends, even if you want to eat them. | Your paid killer husband | That scarecrow that you turned right-side up | Your dorky real-life mom and dad | Me and you and everyone we know | People from your village | Your childhood friends will always have a lukewarm sort of affection for you that they call love. | Pretty boy prince who is inexplicably Christian | Tom Cruise | That guy Leonard with the clipboard | Creep in a velvet jacket |
| Nihilistic? | Yup | In a humanistic way | In a David Fincher way | Mankind is destroying the environment, don’t deserve to live, yadda yadda | Nope. Pretty hopeful | Too confused to be nihilistic | Does killing Paris Hilton make a movie more or less nihilistic? | Ohmygosh, maybe the fish represent Jesus… | Cheerfully so | not at all | Like Howl’s Moving Castle, nihilism is out there & it’s up to kids to make the world a better place. | Hell no | no | no | nope. Amid the apparent chaos there is much order | No, but it fucking should have been…that’s the POINT | Not at all, though it sucks to be The Thing. | no way |
1 By my count, 2 onscreen beheadings, 5 implied beheadings, one character with all four limbs removed while alive, 2 characters who get their hands chopped off, the implied dismemberment of 4 corpses, and a radical wangectomy, if the wang should count as a limb.
2 When the actual on-screen amputation that I’d been rooting for throughout the course of the film actually happened, I was kind of disappointed, because with all the torture scenes I thought it would be much more satisfying.
3 Not counting robot - excuse me, droid amputations, of which there were countless. I was pretty disappointed with the actually amount of amputations in this film, considering the facility with which a lightsaber can dismember.
4 courtesy of Mike from Clap Clap Blog
5 a fingertip, a dead guy’s arm, a head, and a significant chunk of face
6 courtesy of P Munt of Queer Granny
7 I really had a hard time telling how old some of the characters were supposed to be, though.
8 Dude sets his hand on fire
9 Bucking that trend with Solonz too
10 This is as good a place as any to note that I think the new Willy Wonka is going to totally suck. No songs?????
11 Dude sets himself on fire. Self-immolation - the amputation of the late summer?
12Ioan Gruffudd, too young; Jessica Alba, too young; Chris Evans, too old; Michael Chiklis, way older than everybody else (but mostly covered in rock).
13Like “Do you know what happens when rubber gets cold,” and “Do you know what happens when metal gets hot, and then cold,”
14So there’s no gross subtext to the Reed-Sue relationship, and Sue and Johnny actually seem like brother and sister –so that’s all the fun taken out, then.
15Making the second radical wangectomy of the summer