Filmmaker Kurt Kuenne made this deeply personal film after one of his good friends died way before he was meant to. Dear Zachary is a video letter to the son of Kuenne’s friend Andrew, who was violently murdered by his much older and psychotic ex-girlfriend. After breaking up with her and flying her 1,400 miles away, the crazy bitch drove back and shot him five times. Subsequently, she flees to Canada and falls into what turns out to be a very slow and ineffective legal process. While the murder is disturbing, what’s worse is that Andrew’s parents move up to the same Canadian town to be actively involved in the court proceedings and to spend time with their new grandson, Zachary, who is the product of Andrew and their son’s murderer. Since the Canadian government fails to keep the woman in jail, the grandparents are forced to spend time with the person responsible for taking their son away from them. It only gets worse from there.

Read the rest of the Dear Zachary movie review.

Why did I want Expelled to flop? The Ben Stein documentary is apparently about allowing the teaching of intelligent design (i.e. creationism) into schools. I haven’t seen the movie, so I hate that I’m jumping to conclusions the way that religious groups jump on films they think they might find distasteful, but so goes it. If the movie is about free speech and whether creationism should be allowed in public schools on those grounds is one thing, the marketing seems to be catering to the religious group, which makes me think otherwise.

I’m sorry, but evolution is only a theory because it hasn’t been completely proven – it is not a theory because there are glaring holes in it. I’ve had discussions with otherwise intelligent people who claim that evolution isn’t real, but it is the most common sense, obvious thing when you think about it. If I had kids, there would be no way I would allow my children to learn that it’s a possibility that we just popped into existence one day in our current form. It’s just prepostrous.

At the same time, I would encourage them to have an intelligent debate about one versus the other, but that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re talking about teaching creationism in schools. The only reason creationism has been renamed “intelligent design” is to make it sound like it is halfway intelligent.

In other Friday box office news, Forbidden Kingdom will steal the weekend with an estimated $20 million, the best ever opening for Jet Li and the best non-Rush Hour opening for Jackie Chan. Forgetting Sarah Marshall, which I saw last night, will make approximately $16 million. 88 Minutes died on arrival, and will earn about $6 million.