Eleanor Ringel Cater

Old movie titles die hard.

I want to call this “The Best Little Whorehouse in India.”

The title, in fact, is “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel.”

And Burt Reynolds and Dolly Parton aren’t anywhere in sight.
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A primo example of the variety-pack approach to summer block-busters, “The Avengers” lumps together a half-dozen super-heroes, in much the same way cereal companies stack grocery shelves with snack-packs of Sugar Pops, Special K, Cheerios, Coco Puffs, Raisin Bran and Fruit Loops.
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The Damsel in the most distress during Whit Stillman’s arch new comedy, “Damsels in Distress,” was undoubtedly me.

Precious and self-consciously hyper-verbal, “Damsels” takes place in some time-out-of-mind (read, timeless, I guess?) leafy college known as Seven Oaks (the Seven Sisters meet the Kentucky Oaks?)
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“Jeff Who Lives at Home” is the sort of little movie you expect to grow on you.

Instead, it grows away from you, losing its grip in a mildly ingratiating manner.

Nonetheless, it does lose its grip. And its audience.
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The biggest bully in the much-talked-about documentary, “Bully,” isn’t some vicious kid — though we see evidence of their cruelty in the faces of those they’ve attacked.

Rather, it’s an adult. An assistant principal, actually, named Kim. One of those bluff, pseudo-cheery types —her students are her “golden cherubs” — she gives you the creeps early on.
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“The Three Stooges” is like being nyuck-ed to death.

It was shot in Atlanta by the Farrelly Brothers (who are still looking to replicate early boxoffice smashes like “”There’s Something About Mary”). The picture would’ve been one of those one-line, do-I-really-have-to-tell-you reviews.
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Just when you thought Hollywood couldn’t do any worse (“The Vow,” anyone?), the place regurgitates something like “Mirror, Mirror.”

Smug, bitchy and just plain bad, the movie isn’t so much a re-working of the Snow White fairy tale as it is an unwitting peek into the maw of the beast that purports to entertain us.
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Madonna is in the house.

The movie house, I mean. She’s directed a movie It’ called W.E. and I wish it were good. Or provocative. Or at least spicy. Or transgressive. Or any of the many Madonna-stamped attributes her Me-dia factory has been churning out for almost 30 years.
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“W.E.” pilfers the then-and-now configuration used in “Julie & Julia,” but to little effect. Or more accurately, perhaps, to no effect.

If you remember, the earlier film cast Meryl Streep as celebrated chef, Julia Child and Amy Adams as a present-day woman who is obsessed with her and her recipes.
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Movie screenings have been a part of my life for over 30 years. I take them so much for granted that sometimes I forget that, to most people, an advance screening of a film is sorta exotic.

So I thought I’d write a bit about the recent afternoon screening of “The Hunger Games” (which is terrific).
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