So here’s the rest of the alphabet of movies that may or may not be worth another look. Having now seen Thir13en Ghosts twice, this is beginning to look like a risky and unnecessary undertaking, but I’m determined to perservere—at least as far as the titles I have on hand. It’s not that Thir13en Ghosts is any worse than I thought, but it didn’t warrant another look. Opt for its predecessor, the 1999 House on Haunted Hill, instead. Just about everything worth seeing—and a whole lot more—comes from the earlier film. I am sincerely hoping that this does not turn out to be a harbinger of things to come. But let’s look at letters “M” through “Z.”

Welcome to the new-and-improved (well, in a work-in-progress sense) “Weekly Reeler” and a week of some considerable note in terms of the art and indie scene—with no less than three worthy non-mainstream entries. Hobo with a Shotgun opens at The Carolina, while Incendies opens at the Fine Arts, and Woody Allen’s Midnight in Paris opens at both! What more can you ask? Well, asked for or not, there’s also Super 8 and something called Judy Moody and the Not Bummer Summer.

The other week, I had occasion to sift through just about everything I’ve written for the Xpress since 2000. This wasn’t something I undertook lightly since there are over 3000 reviews and what not to sift through, but to provide a friend with some information, there really was no other way. In the process, I kept bumping into titles that I’ve long had it in mind to revisit—some (many) to the degree that I bought the DVDs. I have, however, not actually rewatched a single one of these.

In the sense of high-profile movies, this is a slack week. All we’re getting is Matthew Vaughn’s X-Men: First Class. That’s perhaps wise, since the box office is already slammed with big money-makers, and going up against anything as anticipated as this X-Men prequel/reboot is a death wish. However, we do have a couple of art titles to consider—Meek’s Cutoff at The Carolina and the documentary Bill Cunningham New York at the Fine Arts.

Before it’s possible to entertain the question of movie snobbery—and are you or aren’t you?—it’s necessary to arrive at some kind definition of what constitutes a movie snob. One way and another, almost all of us are some kind of movie snob. I think I once heard of someone who wasn’t, but he ended up as curator of the Martin and Lewis archives and was never heard from again (apart from strangled cries in the night of “Hey, Dino!”). We won’t mention him again. There is, after all, a very fine line between “discerning viewer”—generally defined as being capable of recognizing that anything from Michael Bay should be avoided—and the outright “movie snob”—an altogether more slippery proposition.