Once upon a time...

Since I refuse to financially support any of Joss Whedon's endeavors in any form or fashion, I will not be seeing Cabin in the Woods (and not just because he thinks that making a film that is "clever" can deter from the fact that he is making the type of film he claims to hate-- I don't care if he wants to subvert shit. It's still that "I know you that you know that I know" BS that continues in beer and men's fragrance commercials). Red Letter Media's Half in the Bag: Cabin in the Woods Review. There are spoilers in this review, but I've kept them out of the quotes below. Overall, they liked the film, but they also had some criticisms. I will share my personal favourites:

Jay: "If you think you've seen this premise before... you have. A billion goddamn times, but CITW is aware of that..."
Mike: "It was pretty good... It has this weird-ass premise, and that was both a working point for me and also the detriment at the same time... It comes off as one of those ideas you come up with when you're smoking pot or when you're drunk or something and that you wouldn't actually make... I liked it... but there's that little voice in my brain saying, like, 'What?' ... I appreciate the sort of sarcastic way it opened, and I appreciated that kind of up-front-ness, but it deflated most of the movie for me in terms of building the tension and building everything up in the mystery... I was like, 'Oh, okay, I get the premise.'
Jay: "... Joss Whedon has a tendency to write things that are clever to a detriment... You know you're watching a Joss Whedon-related project when all the characters have a funny quip or are a little too flippant given the gravity of the situation. That seems to be a running thing with his projects... [CITW] worked better as a comedy than as a horror movie."

And Jay and Mike sum up all of S8 and S9 without realizing it:
Jay: "Well, there's a lot of stuff, in the movie, that is either not explained properly or doesn't make a whole lot of sense when you really think about it and break it down."
Mike: "... It didn't make a lick of sense... Why do they have to do the whole 'horror movie' thing? Why do they have to make choices?... [Redacted for spoilers] is a cool idea, but it doesn't exactly fit with- It's like two puzzle pieces that kind of fit if you kinda jam them together... It does come across as an idea that two guys thought of while they were smoking pot, and then when their brains cleared, 'Fuck it! Let's just make it!'"
Jay: "... You can almost appreciate this level of commitment to an idea that is just that goofy."

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Little Women with Winona Ryder and Christian Bale. Just a good film with a lot of good actors, good costuming, and good set design. It's a guilty secret of mine that this is one movie that I actually prefer to the book (even though I dearly love the book). And yes, it's still my favourite movie (I watched it so much that I ruined my original VHS copy of it, so now I have the DVD). :D

"Josie-phine! There's a draft!" XD