The Onion AV Club is unquestionably my favorite entertainment-focused website (other than Cinematical, of course!). Their outstanding coverage of all things pop culture suggests an indie-leaning Entertainment Weekly, and I consider that a very good thing. They always do a great weekly list, and one of their recent offerings is no exception. Check out "Not Again: 24 Great Films Too Painful to Watch Twice." The first movie I thought of when I saw that title was Requiem for a Dream, so it's fitting that they put it in the #1 spot (not sure if these are in order of "most painful" or not). I saw Requiem for a Dream in college -- on a double date! So imagine not only suffering through one of the toughest movies of all time in a theater, but suffering through it with a hyperventilating girl you're trying to get to first base with! Needless to say, it didn't work out.

Though I don't think it's a "great film" by any stretch of the imagination, I can certainly see why Irreversible (#13 on the list) was included. I don't know if I physically could stomach that one a second time. I remember convincing my friends to come see it with me by telling them "It's supposed to be just like Memento!" It was not just like Memento. I still shudder when I walk past a fire extinguisher. I must be a masochist, because I either would watch or have watched several of the movies on their list more than once -- United 93, Million Dollar Baby, Audition, Leaving Las Vegas, etc. There's a lot of good rental ideas for those with a taste for challenging fare, so fire up your Netflix queue and head on over to the link. Just don't plan any parties around these flicks! How about you guys, what is a great film you could never sit through a second time?

Nicolas Cage as a parent? Variety says that Cage has signed up to play "a father who goes in search of his college-aged American-born Muslim son, who's missing overseas" in The Vanished. Cage is 43, so he's certainly old enough chronologically to play the parent of of a college kid. But maybe I'm just fixating on the buck-toothed role he played in his uncle's Peggy Sue Got Married, wherein Kathleen Turner desperately wanted to avoid having him father her child. Or maybe it's Raising Arizona, where he stole another family's quintuplets. Or Leaving Las Vegas, in which he drank himself to death, or Face/Off, where he made John Travolta's daughter think her dad was coming on to her, or the kind of fathers he played in Matchstick Men , The Family Man and The Weather Man.

In real life, Cage is probably a wonderful father to his children, but his performances tend to be all over the map, so we'll wait to see how his collaboration with director Hany Abu-Assad (Paradise Now) turns out. Does Cage's character in The Vanished disapprove of his son's decision to become a Muslim? I would count on it. Does he love him anyway? Of course. Will he come into conflict with racial and religious prejudice? No doubt.

The Vanished is described as a thriller, but it's being made for Focus Features. That, along with the subject matter, clearly signals the film as possible Oscar bait. (For comparison's sake, Focus's releases this fall are Eastern Promises and Lust, Caution, Reservation Road and Atonement.) Cage will next be seen in the sequel National Treasure: Book of Secrets, which hits theaters on December 21. He starts filming Darren Aronofsky's The Wrestler in January and moves on to The Vanished in April. I wouldn't be surprised if they're aiming to complete it in time for the Toronto and/or Venice film festivals next September.