Bethany writes,

Dear Mantis

I love Mantis cause they take the effort out of thinking for me and even then makes me seem more intelligent cause of my new opinionated responses. But what I would really like to see is a list of movies the mantis finds that are good.

I mean it really pisses me of when I pick up the newest "Blockbuster smash" only to find that 5 minutes into I already know every 'surprise' twist they're gonna put in not to mention the whole damn plot. The last good movie I saw was Fight Club and that was a long time ago considering all the crap movies pumped out everyday. Hopefully, scince the Mantis's life revolves around evaluating the media it has seen some good movies, so, could you please post them so I don't have to keep looking.

Dear Bethany

Thank you for that odd collection of sentences and the uncertain message they bare. In response to your request, I thought it would be amusing to go through the list of 'top 100 movies' on IMDB or Amazon (as they represent to some degree what you silly munchkins are watching) and make a facetious but informative comment about each.

Unfortunately I soon discovered the IMDB top 100 movies list to be depressingly predictable. Not a bad list of films, but one with no apparent thought gone into it. That is to say, a bunch of films that (with the obvious exception of The Matrix) were rather 'obviously good'. The sort of films that one rather suspects people thought they ought to vote for just to look informed, even if they hadn't seen them. 'Default Oscar Movies', for the most part.

The '100 worst' list is even more depressing, comprising exclusively of good/bad b-movies that no one has ever even heard of. I assure you that whatever the 100 worst films ever made are, these are not them. Any decent 100 worst films list should, by definition, consist exclusively of over budgeted high profile CRAP that was the only movie on all summer, and so everyone had little choice but to go and see. If a movie is so bad as to be of no consequence, then it is of no consequence.

I then looked at the top 100 selling DVD list on Amazon, which again was nay but an entirely predictable list of what you already know any given cross section of middle class idiots in the world to be watching. What is genuinely fascinating, however, is that the top 100 selling VHS comprised exclusively of what I would consider to be 'housewife' material. What this means from an anthropological perspective exactly, I will leave up to you to decide.

Either way, the moral of the story is this. Lists are crap, and I'm not going to write one. Sorry hon'.

If you want to find some good films to watch, dear Bethany, then there are numerous references to 'Mantis approved materials' littered about the many rants. Go find.

When your species has learned to read ON the lines, then perhaps you can start reading between them.