I have a confession to make -- I saw The Last of the Mohicans in its entirety for the first time this past weekend. Shocking, isn't it? I'm not sure how this happened except that I was just young enough when it came out in theaters to find historical films boring, never managed to catch it on television as a teen, and sneered at it while in college history classes. I even did a massive paper on the myth of the American west that James Fenimore Cooper took up a lot of space in, but I still managed to avoid every version of the movie because it was finals week. (Believe me, if I had known then that I'd be writing for Cinematical instead of earning a history doctorate, I'd have given up a night of research for a night with Daniel Day Lewis.)

It's a sign of the times that I'm working and writing in that I got to the end, and immediately wished they had made a sequel. Not just because of all the open-shirtedness (yes, that's a word) but because it could have explored a vanishing world, and really dug into the character of Hawkeye. There are other books, after all, and Mohicans is a loose enough adaptation that they could have cherry-picked and expanded another Leatherstocking tale or two. They still could. Some part of me would like to see The Prairie with an old, grim Nathaniel in his final days ... but maybe it's just best everyone imagine him happily civilized with Cora.

But we never get history-based sequels. I'm still crushed that they've never brought back Captain Jack Aubrey. The Aubrey-Maturin series is fantastic, and the Peter Weir film is one of my all-time favorites. I'd happily give up a fourth Pirates of the Caribbean installment for another Master and Commander ... and only partially because Aubrey doesn't spawn a million imitators in eyeliner.

"Oh my God, it made $80 million at the box office! I have no faith in mass audiences!" So goes the Sunday night / Monday morning refrain across movie websites, Twitter, and podcasts worldwide. It's a saying that's started to make me bristle a bit. Sure, I wince when something like Paul Blart: Mall Cop rakes in an insane amount of money, week after week ... but how can you really blame audiences for putting something like X-Men Origins: Wolverine at the top of the box office?

The obvious answer would be "They should listen to critics, and avoid the film!" But that's a dicey thing when it comes to popcorn fare, because a lot of it doesn't receive stellar reviews from critics, but it's still an enjoyable, pulpy ride. I don't subscribe to the idea of turning one's brain off once you buy your ticket, but there's something to be said for watching a movie like Crank or Punisher: War Zone once in a while.

Audiences also don't know when they should listen to critics -- or who they should listen to. Sure, general audiences should find it in their mouse-fingers to seek out Rotten Tomatoes but a lot of people hear only the soundbites of Ben Lyons (or their local equivalent), or see the blandly 'It's stupid, but you'll probably like it" reviews in their newspapers. I know a lot of otherwise intelligent people who go see a bad summer flick because they'd read a good review in the newspaper or heard it on the radio.

What a hallowed genre Obsessed is a member of! Right up there with such psycho stalker greats as Play Misty For Me, Fatal Attraction, and The Hand that Rocks the Cradle. If you'd like to remember a few more, Peter did a great list for Valentine's Day ... and would you look at that, 5 out of 7 of those are chicks! Why the persistence of this cinematic archetype? Why don't we ever see psychotic male stalkers beyond Sleeping with the Enemy? Where's Fatal Attraction where a man is screaming, begging not to be ignored?

My theory has always been that we see these stories played out again and again because they're somewhat of a male fantasy. Think about Play Misty For Me, Fatal Attraction, Obsessed, or even the real B-movie variations like Swimfan, The Temp, and The Crush. There's something very flattering and erotic about a woman who can't get enough of you -- a plot point exploited pretty heavily in Play Misty and Fatal Attraction, since both male protagonists really set their stalkers off by ... sleeping with them. If Fatal Dan and Misty Dave had just taken Alex and Evelyn out for a nice dinner and a movie, no sex, would any butcher knives have been wielded? I guess so, given the chaste plotline of Obsessed: just flirting is enough to drive Ali Larter over the edge.

Hey, have you ever thought why movies destroy Planet Earth so often? Lisa Kennedy of The Denver Post did, and not only could she not understand why, but she concluded that doing so was very unethical because it's scary. If you can't help but relish or understand the War Against the Machines, she begs you to at least think of the children: "Even films pitched to the kids aren't safe. A lavish action sequence in the enjoyable 3-D spectacle Monsters vs. Aliens gleefully wrecks the Golden Gate Bridge. As beloved as it is by critics, the opening scenes in WALL-E of an uninhabitable metropolis suggest filmmakers don't think hard enough about the impact visions of apocalyptic or post-cataclysmic landscapes might have on developing imaginations. Too often, they're feeding the pleasures of their own inner kid or teen."

You know, call me crazy but I think Andrew Stanton actually really thought about that opening sequence. I believe he may have had a specific meaning in mind, something along the lines of "if you keep throwing away stuff, you'll eventually run out of room." I even think he handled it relatively gently by introducing a dancing robot. No? He was all about flaunting his CGI skills? My bad. Sorry kids, here's a new toy to numb your emotional trauma. Throw it away when you're bored. No, trash doesn't pile up -- it turns into rainbows!

I'll freely admit that disaster movies can make annihilation pretty damn insipid, but complaining that Watchmen or WALL-E is irresponsible for showing devastation not only misses the point, but suggests someone is determined to live in a fluffy delusion where landfills don't even exist (let alone fill up!) and nuclear weapons shower us with lollipops instead of radiation poisoning.

As I was writing up the latest Robin Hood casting news, it occurred to me that Ridley Scott's film will undoubtedly play fast and loose with the Plantagenets. (A historical film that alters the facts? No!) I decided I didn't care -- for now, anyway.

When it comes to historical films, I'm maddeningly hot and cold. There are films I forgive even the most glaring errors because the story (real and cinematically whitewashed) is good, or because it spurred me into research I never recovered from. Braveheart and 300 both fall into that category, as does Elizabeth Taylor's Cleopatra.

Then there are films that leave me furious, such as Shekhar Kapur's Elizabeth, which is just so inaccurate as to be bizarre. Actually, films dealing with the Tudors in general tend to infuriate me (I'm looking at you, The Other Boleyn Girl), possibly because it's so well documented and because the real story is far more interesting than any soapy fiction they throw in. But even here I'm not to be trusted -- Kapur's Elizabeth: The Golden Age is full of fiction and clunky symbolism, but it's the very definition of "guilty pleasure" for me because of the ruffs, the Armada, and oh-my-God-Clive-Owen-in-a-doublet. The same goes for Showtime's The Tudors, which has really impressed me by continuing past poor Anne Boleyn, and into Henry's really terrifying years.