Asks venerated critic David Denby in the ’78 Superman-styled title of his new book, Do the Movies Have a Future? (Spoiler alert: Yes. Yes, they certainly do.)

Don’t be misled by the title, as this is not a near-400-page examination of the arguably rhetorical question. He deals with cinema’s place — and the criticism of cinema — in the Internet age only in his introduction and first few chapters, which then give way to an unthemed collection of essays and reviews, most previously published in the pages of The New Yorker. Whether you’re new to Denby or not, it’s a pleasurable, first-rate read of film criticism.

Among the features and profiles on stars, directors and genres, he delivers the single-best summations of “mumblecore” and “chick flicks” I’ve ever read. He’s sharp in both brain and barbs, able to break apart a genre with wit without being entirely dismissive — for example, “In romantic comedies as well as in chick flicks, Hollywood has been throwing women against the wall of Matthew McConaughey’s stupidity to see what sticks (the answer: Kate Hudson).”

In another piece, he gives director Victor Fleming his due and wonders, as I have, how the man responsible for helming two bona fide classics in The Wizard of Oz and Gone with the Wind — both from the same year, mind you — isn’t often top-of-mind among discussions of finest filmmakers. He even examines two film critics, notably Pauline Kael, which backs up the entirety of Brian Kellow’s recommended bio, Pauline Kael: A Life in the Dark: namely, that friendship with her was often one-sided and doomed to be temporary, and that she could be quite the rhymes-with-stunt.

Now, Denby is not the type of film critic who second-guesses his use of a word like “exegesis.” If you don’t know what it means and don’t bother to look it up, that’s your loss. The man definitely has his own language, which I’d argue is part of why he’s been able to carve a career out of talking about the language of movies themselves. Phrases like “a bounder” and “learned boobies” abound — and with the latter, he’s not talking about the breasts of a hot teacher.

Speaking of the body, I was amused at how often Denby describes his subjects in physical terms, and in the inimitable way he does it. For example, he notes Julia Roberts “for her big easy carriage” and “with her loose, shambling, cowhand’s walk”; Seth Rogen, meanwhile, sports “the round face and sottish grin of a Jewish Bacchus.” Whereas some may find these observations off-putting, I chalk them up to part of the book’s overall wide appeal.

Show me one online-only, fanboy “critic” who can turn such a phrase. You can’t; it’s as futile as viewing a film on a iPod screen — the subject of an early chapter. Do the Movies Have a Future? is a strong antidote to the ill-informed, online fanboy poison that sadly passes for film criticism these days. —Rod Lott

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One of the books I’ve looked forward to the most this year has been David Konow’s Reel Terror, a paperback original aiming to tell, as its subtitle promises, 100 years of horror-movie history. I cannot say that it disappointed me in offering behind-the-scenes stories on scads of classic films, even if DVD documentaries and/or commentaries have rendered most of them superfluous.

While he hits all the usual suspects — many of them the subjects of their own texts, including Night of the Living Dead to The Exorcist — it’s also nice to see due given to less acclaimed but no less entertaining flicks like Creepshow, The Evil Dead or the Hammer output.

I can forgive that the new wave of Saw and Paranormal Activity franchises don’t merit more than a few lines in an epilogue, as insanely profitable and hugely influential as they already are. I’m also willing to overlook that, unlike Jason Zinoman’s recent and superior Shock Value, Konow doesn’t attempt to thread it all together into a nifty narrative that places the films in a cultural perspective.

What I cannot forgive, however, is that the author has made an ungodly amount of errors. Either Reel Terror skipped the fact-checking and shaping processes, or — and I’m not being hyperbolic — is perhaps the worst-edited work of nonfiction I’ve seen come out of a major publishing house. The repetition alone is maddening.

Like what, you ask? Well, for instance:

On page 47, we get this quote from Twilight Zone writer George Clayton Johnson: “Rod had been shaping the idea of doing half-hour science fiction stories because that way he could escape some of the worst aspects of censorship.”

Two pages later, we get this quote, also from Johnson: “He had been shaping the idea of doing half-hour science fiction stories because that way he could escape some of the worst aspects of censorship.”

On page 181, in the Jaws chapter, we’re introduced to “Jeffrey Kramer, who played Deputy Hendricks,” and three pages later, we meet “Jeffrey Kramer, who played Deputy Hendricks.”

On page 199, while discussing The Omen, Konow writes, “Seltzer named his Antichrist Damien after Father Damien, who was one of his idols. A single sentence later, the next paragraph begins, “Father Damien was one of Seltzer’s idols.”

On page 464, Konow states that “There’s a joke in Hollywood that directors don’t want writers around once a movie’s under way, comparing them to hookers that won’t leave after they’ve been paid, but Demme kept Tally around for just about everything.” That joke must be worth repeating, because on page 508, he writes, “Unlike a lot of productions where the writer’s the hooker overstaying her welcome, Williamson was very welcome on the set.”

The author’s mistakes are factual as well. We learn that Jaws “made $7,061,513 opening weekend, which today would be $70,000,000, almost twice what The Dark Knight made opening weekend.” TDK‘s actual opening weekend, per BoxOfficeMojo.com, was $160,887,295, meaning Konow is off by roughly $126 million.

We’re told Richard Donner “had also done two feature films prior to The Omen, X-15 and Salt and Pepper, starring Sammy Davis, Jr., and Peter Lawford.” This ignores Donner’s Lolita knock-off starring Charles Bronson, Lola, readily available on many public-domain collections.

Titles just are not Konow’s strong suit, either, despite the ease provided by the Internet Movie Database, not to mention poster images galore available via Google’s image search function. John Carpenter’s 1978 telefilm Someone’s Watching Me! is correctly listed (although without exclamation mark) on page 252, but then incorrectly named two sentences later as Someone Is Watching Me. On page 258, it becomes Somebody’s Watching Me. All future instances are correct, if you forgive that pesky punctuation. Outside the book’s genre, the maternal word in Throw Momma from the Train is Mama on page 460.

And then there are the misspellings — not typos, but brazen misspellings, especially in a work on horror films. Witness:
• genre staple Lance Henriksen, credited on page 205 as “Lance Hendrickson”;
• the Child’s Play killer doll Chucky, noted on page 497 as “Chuckie”; or
• Edgar Allan Poe, appearing on page 444 with the middle name of “Allen.” I see that error all the time, but again, this is a book devoted to horror history. There should be no excuses when you’re discussing the guy who arguably kickstarted the entire genre.

It’s as if Konow did most of the homework assignment, but didn’t check his answers before turning it in. With such a public forum at stake, that, my friends, is frightening. —Rod Lott

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Immediately upon learning that Dwarfsploitation was, indeed, truly a book all about movies featuring midgets — pardon me, I mean “little people” — I thought that it had better discuss the seminal scene of Billy Barty cutting off Carrie Fisher’s dress with a sword in Under the Rainbow, or the guide wouldn’t be worth a pint of anything.

As they said in those spaghetti sauce commercials of the ’80s, it’s in there. Co-authors Brad Paulson and Chris Watson, both regular-sized humans, have compiled reviews on quite a wide selection of films. I didn’t count how many, but there are 320 pages’ worth, from The Adventures of Baron Munchausen to The Wonderful World of the Brothers Grimm, with more Weng Weng titles than I’ve been able to locate in between.

2010’s excellent Destroy All Movies!!! book rounded up every appearance of punks on film its writers could find — no matter the size of the role — and critiqued the flicks, hilariously. Paulson and Watson do the same here, but subbing dwarfs for punks, and not matching the wit of Destroy editors Zack Carlson and Bryan Connolly.

The passion for their subject is equal, however. In fact, Paulson and Watson even have created a handful of terms they use throughout, such as calling anyone who’s not a little person a “tallie.” That particular one is used the most, and kind of annoying after its first use.

Also, speaking of passion, either Paulson or Watson really, really wants to bang a female dwarf. The reviews are not credited, so I’m unsure exactly who has the hots for the little ones — maybe both. This assumption is drawn from the entries on the likes of Total Recall and I Hope They Serve Beer in Hell. It could be all an act, yet it’s not written like one.

You’re not going to get deep insight into the films featured. That’s not the point. The point is celebrating the little guy, in an easygoing manner that’s both affectionate and amusing. For example, take this sentence from their look at Ghoulies 2: “The great dwarf actor Phil Fondacaro … looks like John Oates from the band Hall and Oates and wears suspenders.”

Without a doubt, unless you are stick-up-the-ass politically correct, Dwarfsploitation makes for a fun read. It is not without its, er, shortcomings — namely, it’s in desperate need of an editor. Whether repeatedly misspelling the name of someone as iconic as Diane Arbus or writing that Gremlins hit theaters in 2004, Paulson and Watson have turned in not the cleanest of copy. That loose nature may be appropriate for a project that sounds like it could’ve originated from a frat chat, but the errors number so many that I could not ignore them; I would be doing a disservice to potential readers if I chose not to bring it up.

Most people may gloss over that, instead to grow apoplectic that movies they expected to be covered are not. Now, Dwarfsploitation never claims to be complete, but for including as many obscure flicks as they have, notable omissions abound.

For example, where is Don’t Look Now? Scrooged? The Garbage Pail Kids Movie? Mulholland Dr.? On the Right Track? Jimmy the Kid? Burial Ground: Nights of Terror? The Sinful Dwarf? The Jackass franchise?

Actually, I’ll tell you where The Sinful Dwarf is: misfiled in the Ts. Again, a professional sweep-through could have elevated this book from recommended with reservations to highly recommended. —Rod Lott

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It’s hard to remember a time when Steven Seagal was actually cool. It was 1988, when nobody knew who he was, yet here he was, headlining a pretty good B-actioner called Above the Law. It heralded the dawn of a new (stoic) action star, whose career would be packed with hit after hit … until it imploded.

Each and every step is chronicled, examined, poked and prodded by single-monikered Internet movie reviewer Vern in the exhaustive and exhaustingly hilarious Seagalogy: A Study of the Ass-Kicking Films of Steven Seagal, now in a bigger, funnier, ass-kickier updated edition from its original 2008 release.

Vern begins exactly where he should, with a dissection of Above the Law that runs a staggering 16 pages. His love for the movie is evident, but that doesn’t mean he’s not above taking some potshots (“It’s obvious that the CIA is corrupt is they’re gonna hire a guy who looks like Henry Silva. I mean look at the guy’s face. Don’t tell me they didn’t know that motherfucker was evil”).

Seagal’s debut marks the start of what Vern terms his “Golden Era.” (For the record, the book is divided into that, plus the “Silver Era,” “Transitional Period,” “DTV Era” and the all-new, 10-chapter “Chief Seagal Era,” from 2009 to the present). Squee over Machete as much as you want, but all Seagal fans know that the early days were the best, given the too-much-fun, mega-violent, ponytail-laden shoot-’em-up romps that were Hard to Kill, Marked for Death and Out for Justice.

Next came Seagal’s biggest critical and commercial hit, Under Siege, which heralded the beginning of the “Silver Era,” a time when the actor’s clout grew to such that he began exerting more of his influence into his films, like the environmental speech to the audience that closed On Deadly Ground, also his directorial debut. It was a period that also saw his first sequel (Under Siege 2), his first death (a fraction into the incredibly underrated Executive Decision) and an attempt at gloomy serial killer/buddy cop films (The Glimmer Man).

Of that last one — a big ol’ failure at the box office — Vern wonders about the reasoning behind Seagal’s character’s nickname of “The Glimmer Man” because when he served as an assassin, a glimmer of light would be the last thing his targets would see before death: “You can’t just assume they saw a glimmer unless there is some kind of evidence. Unless somebody carved ‘glimmer’ into the jungle floor with a twig as they gasped their last breath, this glimmer man story just does not hold water.”

Seagal’s “Transitional Period” includes his first two straight-to-video movies and two attempts at a box-office comeback, one of which worked: Exit Wounds. But Half Past Dead did not, and that gave way to the “DTV Era,” where he apparently has resigned to play for the rest of his natural born life. (Even the long-delayed anthology comedy The Onion Movie, in which Seagal spoofs himself in a fake movie trailer for Cockpuncher, deservedly skipped the multiplex for shiny discs.)

I knew Seagal had made a lot of low-budget flicks that bypassed theaters to premiere on DVD. Heck, I had seen exactly two of them: Ticker, which isn’t overtly terrible, and Submerged, which is. (I recently tried to watch Against the Dark, the 2009 one pitting him against vampires, but was so bored that I gave up about 15 minutes in.) But did you know that he’s made — at press time — more than two dozen of these things? All of them have appeared within the last decade. Compare that number to his theatrical output: 13. That’s sad.

These DTV efforts sport terribly generic titles (Black Dawn, Urban Justice) that render them interchangeable. And that’s the only downside to Seagalogy: Because the films themselves are so repetitive, so be it the book. It may be different for those who’ve actually seen these movies, but the wide majority of us have not, and you can only read “ex-CIA” so often before your eyes gloss over. Still, Vern’s descriptions remain uproarious, and likely more entertaining than the flicks.

Take, for example, the 9/11-informed Born to Raise Hell, among the new entries: “[Seagal] shoots 14 holes through the wall around a door and kicks it out like a perforated coupon. I hope that’s a real police technique.” Or his short-lived reality TV series, Lawman, also fresh to this edition: “In movies Seagal interrupts major crimes in progress. He happens to run into armed robbers while going to the liquor store, or he’s there to save the day when the Vice President is attacked. But in real life Seagal has to drive around all night staring at people on the streets just to find an open container or a shitty driver who turns out to have outstanding warrants.”

This Vern fellow doesn’t put out books fast enough. His 2010 Seagalogy follow-up, Yippee Ki-Yay Moviegoer!, is awesome, but that was two years ago now. He also pens a column in CLiNT, Mark Millar’s UK comics magazine, but nine pages in one year is like nothing. I want more! More! More! Would it kill him to produce the definitive work on all the movies made by all of The Expendables? I think not.

It is interesting that twice now, Vern writes, two of these DTV-era Seagal pictures were shot as Alien-esque sci-fi invasions — Submerged and Attack Force — only to be shorn of those elements entirely in the editing room. Now that’s moviemaking! It also says a lot about the quality and care put into these flicks when, as Vern points out, one of them — Flight of Fury — was actually a remake of a Michael Dudikoff movie … and Seagal didn’t even know it! (Notes Vern, “Both versions have topless women in them,” so whew!)

In a stroke of semi-genius, Vern also reviews Seagal’s two CDs, a 2006 live concert in Seattle of The Steven Seagal Blues Band, and the man’s branded Lightning Bolt Energy Drink, which remains, to this day, the worst thing that’s ever been in my mouth.

Vern likes the beverage, but I won’t hold that against him. I also won’t hold his association with Ain’t It Cool News against him, because — unlike that site’s “pwesent”-begging, self-aggrandizing, spelling-and-grammar-challenged but well-connected leader, Vern can actually write. And Seagalogy not only made me laugh my ass off, but sent me to Amazon to buy some of the early Seagal DVDs I didn’t already own.

I said it before, and I’ll say it again: This book is an instant cult classic. Now for the second time in a row. —Rod Lott

Buy it at Amazon.