It's a hard out here for a critic.  Us online folk get zero respect, and there's a growing trend for studios to screen fewer and fewer films in advance for anyone to review.  You'd think they'd show us the good stuff (like The Bourne Mentholatum and Sunshine), but instead we get the ridiculous (Bratz and Daddy Day Camp).  The only stand the PSB staff can even think of taking is to not even mention the movies that aren't screened for us.  Oh, we'll still download them for free and watch them in the comforts of our cell phone-and-white trash-free living room.  We just won't talk about them here.  We're sorry it's come to this, but it's something completely out of our control.

Right or wrong, Arctic Tale is one of those movies that gets swallowed up in a storm of political controversy for, essentially, all the wrong reasons.  The right-wing nutjobs who insist that global warming doesn't exist have been up in arms before seeing one frame of Tale, presumably because that what Rush Limbaugh and Sean Hannity told them to think (or maybe they all received emergency messages on their "dark marks").  The funny thing is that the film, which tells the story of a maturation of a polar bear and a walrus, never mentions the dreaded GW words.  If anything, the filmmakers make it seem like the temperature-related issues are cyclical, which is what the more intelligent anti-science knuckle-draggers insist is happening out there.  There's a bible-thumping critic here in PSB's market who actually took a stopwatch to pinpoint the exact moment the political propaganda was stuffed down his throat.  Talk about going in with an open mind . . .

What everyone fails to recognize, however, is that Tale is a garbage picture.  They'd like to ride on the coattails of March of the Penguins, but that's like comparing The Wire to Everybody Loves Raymond.  This was designed for a very broad audience, which is why they opted not for the intelligent narration of Morgan Freeman, but instead cast Queen Latifah as the "storyteller."  And when the Queen blurts out lines like, "When yo momma call, you best be runnin'," you're not sure if you should be cringing at her or the white writers (including one of Al Gore's babelicious daughters) who think this sort of Steppin Fetchit act is funny.  When you're not scratching your head over that, you'll be hit with fart jokes and animal versions of "We Are Family."  Tale is more of a cross between Animal Planet's version of America's Funniest Home Videos and Milo & Otis, and the footage you're watching isn't sequential, or even of the same critters.  And it's far from captivating.  PSB says 4

The most amazing thing about the insanely hysterical Superbad is that the premise is the biggest piece of shit movie cliché on two legs . . . and it's still an incredibly entertaining and well-made flick.  There have been billions of movies about outcast teenagers trying to pop their cherry before going off to college, but none have been this funny, realistic, or full of heart.  Seth (Jonah Hill) and Evan (Michael Cera) -- the screen versions of scribes Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg -- are two weeks away from their high school graduation, and the perfect storm of a buddy's new fake ID and a well-timed invitation to a house party is seen as their big chance to score some liquor and cooze before they part ways to separate colleges.

The film follows about 24 hours in this pivotal period for Seth and Evan, including run-ins with law enforcement (one of which is played by Rogen) and many, many rides on public transportation.  Yes, that's right -- while other predictable teen sex romps show their protagonists tool around in nice rides, our heroes here ride a bus.  And that's just one of many things that makes Superbad the best comedy of the summer.  Directed by Greg Mottola, the writer-director of the 1996 indie hit The Daytrippers.  PSB says 9

Our sole exception to the no screening/no mention rule would have to be The Simpsons Movie, because . . . well, because it's The Simpsons Movie.  And we won't say much, either.  Given a choice between seeing this movie and watching three new episodes of the show, we'll take the three new episodes all day long.  PSB says 7

Hot Rod is the name of a movie that exists to prove an important point: Andy Samberg is tolerable in a 90-second Digital Short on Saturday Night Live, but very, very far from tolerable in a 90-minute feature film.  Clearly trying to establish a Napoleon Dynamite-type vibe in his creation of a mental midget with delusions of grandeur, Samberg and Co. literally give the impression they're making up the story as they go.  Al Swearengen can't save it, but Borat's girlfriend wears all sorts of cute outfits, so at least you have something nice to look at while you silently pray for your own death.  PSB says 2

Next week: Reviews of Resurrecting the Champ and The Nanny Diaries, because they're the only films being screened.