Each week, The Exhibitionist comments on the latest news, trends and innovations related to the theater industry, or it discusses long-continuing problems with and complaints against cinemas in general, or it simply relates a specific moviegoing experience of yours truly. But rarely does this column get into the subject of actual movies. Well, seeing as there's not much new in the industry this week, and seeing as I'm fortunately not being dragged to see Sex and the City and therefore have no experience to relate about being a sole male in an auditorium packed with women, I figure this is a perfect time to bring up actual movies. Not just any movies, though: I'm presently only interested in discussing movies about, set in or prominently featuring movie theaters.

The earliest movie that I'm familiar with that significantly involves a theater is Buster Keaton's Sherlock Jr. The silent comedian plays a projectionist who falls asleep on the job then has a dream in which he literally climbs through the movie screen and into a detective film. A similar idea of breaking the boundary between auditorium and screen is used in Woody Allen's The Purple Rose of Cairo and in John McTiernan's The Last Action Hero, both of which involve a movie character who manages to leave his respective film within the film. But nothing tops Keaton's screen-entering stunt, which utilizes special effects that still astonish more than 80 years later.

(In honor of Mother's Day, we're launching a series of posts today written, in part, by our mothers after we asked them one simple (yet very complex) question: What's your favorite movie and why?)

My mother, Deanna, is not much of a cinephile, but she claims to have at least learned from me different ways of appreciating movies. For example, she was always a huge Rogers and Hammerstein fan, and still cites The Sound of Music and South Pacific, as well as the non-R&H musical My Fair Lady, as some of her favorite films. But after I went to film school in the mid-90s, she became a fan of Quentin Tarantino dialogue and added Reservoir Dogs and True Romance to her list. However, it was dropping out of college that caused her to subjectively choose Good Will Hunting as her most favorite movie of all time:

"I love GWH very much because of how much the lead character reminds me of my son (Christopher) and how gifted/intelligent he is ... and how frustrated friends and family of his (like Will's) were when he decided there was no need to return to college and get his degree ... etc. But now that Christopher, as Will did, has come to his senses (!!!!) and did go back to school ... and he graduates with honors this month ... and how happy Chistopher's friend's and family and especially his MOM are.... well, I won't tell you the ending! You'll just have to watch the film and come listen to me brag on and on and on about my Christopher!!!!"

I have a problem. As a moviegoer, I'm always attracted to charisma over deed. More times than I can count, I find myself rooting for the bad guy and hoping that they bring the bland hero down. Of course, sometimes it's a fight between hero and villain for who has the most charisma, and sometimes the film wants us to love the villain, but whatever the case, the thorn is usually a lot more fun than the hero he's stuck onto. And this means that I'm often disappointed at the end, because the bad guy almost always dies.

Still, this is what's so great about film -- you can love the baddies without the real-world consequences. We've all heard about bad-guy lust, but this way, the baddie can do his bad thing for us to enjoy, without us getting all of the negative repercussions. We get the wild eye without the body count, the ripped muscles without the steroid set-up, and the twisted humor without the reality.

However, seeing that bad guys are my kryptonite, it's hard to pick just seven. While the following is, by no means, all-encompassing, it's a list of some of my favorite baddies. Some we're told to love, and others, well, they just steal the show.

Jason Dean -- Heathers

This is probably what started it all. When my friends and I gathered around the television to watch Christian Slater's new movie, we were immediately smitten. We didn't care that J.D. had a thing for doling out his own deadly justice. By the time he said: "Alright, so maybe I am killing everyone in the school... because nobody loves me!" We were exclaiming: "We love you!" J.D. had the drawling, Jack Nicholson voice, the sexy trench, and the need to row out to the middle of a lake somewhere with a bottle of tequila, his sax, and some Bach. He was very. Very very.