You might also like to read my DVD reviews.

Firstly...

• A good movie/series
  Obvious, really.
   
  
• Subtitles
  I'm one of those weirdos who watches with subtitles on. I'm not hard of hearing, I just like it that way. Maybe I saw too many strange European films on C4 when I was young? :-)
  A film will have to be quite good (Fried Green Tomatoes (at the Whistle Stop Café)) to get by without subtitles.
   
  
• Widescreen
  Despite ONLY having a 14" television, I will ALWAYS choose widescreen, letterboxed, whatever they want to call it.
  As an experiment I taped Evita from Sky and watched it side-by-side with mom's widescreen DVD. That experience alone tells me why widescreen is ALWAYS preferable, despite what the "I'm losing half my picture" dickheads whinge about.
  (if you happen to be one of the anti-widescreen people, then sorry, but I reserve a certain brand of mostly-harmless contempt for you)
  
   
  
• Director's commentary
  It is actually quite revealing to listen to the commentary track to get insights into why certain things were doing in certain ways.
   
  
• Deleted scenes
  Some things can, actually, be quite interesting. Like the 'original' ending of Final Destination. Okay, it was bull (the original ending, not the movie!), but it was interesting.
  In some cases (Bring It On) the director discusses why certain scenes were omitted. Again, more insights.
   
  
• Extras
  Documentaries, trailers, blah blah blah.

Favourite scenes

1. That "flying in at the end" scene in Fly Away Home.
   Pure class, pure beauty.
    
   
2. The "lobby" scene (in The Matrix - if you don't know).
    
   
3. The "one-immortal-defeats-another" scene in the original Highlander (either one - they were both impressive).
    
   
4. Alyson Hannigan as band geek in American Pie 2 - "Once when I was, uh, here..." (referring to her habit in the original of prefixing most stuff with "Once when I was in band camp...").
    
   
5. Willow's "force is okay" comment in Buffy 2/16 Bewitched, bothered and bewildered.
    
   
6. One of the The 10th Kingdom episodes where the father and daughter are in the forest and they fall asleep to magic mushrooms singing "A whiter shade of pale" (trust me, a simple description just doesn't do justice to this scene!).

Other notable scenes

• The end showdown in Bring It On.
  Do cheerleaders really actually do that crap? How much is their insurance?!?!?
  (nerdy - at high school level, it is illegal and dangerous for cheerleaders to do most of the stunts depicted, they are performed by 'professional cheerleaders')

Most visual style

• The Lost Boys
   
  
• Highlander
   
  
• Fly Away Home

Also a nod to The Mod Squad which had a strong visual style, but it just seemed to remind me of Bad Boys.

Pure class

• The Matrix
   
  
• The Terminator
   
  
• Chicken Run (but for a totally different reason!)

Most violence (yay!)

• The Matrix
   
  
• The Matrix
  (if you want to know why it is listed twice, you've obviously never seen it)
   
  
• The Matrix
  (if you want to know why it is listed thrice, you've seen it but you weren't paying attention)
   
  
• Blade
   
  
• The Terminator
   
  
• Falling Down
   
  
• Terminator 2

Biggest letdown

• The Perfect Storm

Might have been the biggest letdown if not for...

• Lost Souls

Let me start again. Winona plays this semi-deranged religious freak who is a little bit cute in a highly eccentric cuddly way. She attends an exorcism and swipes the materials that the guy being exorcised was scribbling on. It was a code. The code spells the name of some guy that happens to be plugging his new book on TV at the time. So she thinks that very soon now the Devil will inhabit this guy and, like, destroy the world.
The obvious question here is what exactly should she do to stop this from happening? Well, she doesn't exactly know. Which is forgivable.
The writer doesn't exactly know either, which is not forgivable.
In the end she does something that, really, could have been done a hell of a lot earlier, thus saving us from having to watch the entirety of this movie.

Maxim is quoted as saying "Scary stuff". Did they watch the same movie?
Did they watch it at all?

But was Lost Souls actually a let down?

As for the story, the question is so not 'is this guy gonna be the antichrist', but much 'is this chick whacko?'. If you've seen it (and maybe hated it), watch it again. I hated it the first time around (as you might tell from the above), but on a second viewing something in my head kinda 'clicked' and I began to see this not as a 'religion fights the devil' but more of an examination of one person's state of mental imbalance. This is a deep, dark sorta movie that should really have be script doctored by somebody who knew better than to chuck in a bunch of tired clicés, but there is a basic premise.
It is for this reason that I think this movie actually deserves quite a high score. The point, the purpose, the whole thing appears to have alluded many people who saw it. It is just so very unfortunate that whoever designed the DVD jacket decided to make so many blatant references to The Exorcist (maybe s/he didn't get it either?). Yeah, the girl is religious. Yeah, an exorcism was performed. Um... that's about it. Oh, wait, they both took place in America. Frankly, I could probably draw as many parallels between The Exorcist and, let me think... Chocolat... Yeah...