“Sadly, I kind of liked it,” I hear the guy behind me say to his friend as the closing credits of Bruno, Sacha Baron Cohen’s latest outrageous, tongue-in-cheek (and that’s the most appropriate of places) social satire begin to roll. “Is that bad?”

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Is there any end to the Saw franchise? The simple answer is no — not as long as torture-porn-loving teenagers and twentysomethings flock to each new, uncommonly brutal installment.

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Seth Rogen’s rapid rise atop the comedic heap has been a welcome reprieve from the well-scrubbed, chiseled faces that dominate Hollywood’s leading-man landscape.

But how will Rogen handle success? Can he keep from going down the road of the similarly unconventional, increasingly one-note Jack Black?

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More than a year after the Showcase Cinemas inside Kenwood Towne Centre closed suddenly (which was preceded by the unfortunate shuttering of the plush, old-school Kenwood Twin across the street back in 1995), the local movie landscape gets a shot in the arm with the opening of the Kenwood Theatre(7815 Kenwood Road) on Friday.

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Dear Nicolas Cage,

Why do you suck now?

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Movieline is back. Sort of.

Launched in 1989, the magazine was — like the beat it covered — a glossy, gossipy, A-list-laden Hollywood wank-fest full sometimes vapid, usually smart, almost always entertaining content. (I still have a copy of the issue with Wild at Heart’s Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern on the cover.

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David Fincher is a busy man. After giving us only one film (2002's Panic Room) in the eight years following 1999's gleefully subversive, zeitgeist-capturing Fight Club, the notoriously meticulous filmmaker delivered one of 2010’s best films, The Social Network, which was his third effort in four years following 2007's excellent Zodiac and 2008's out-of-character — it's essentially a straight-up love story — The Curious Case of Benjamin Button.

And he's not done yet: Fincher's American version of Stieg Larsson’s The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo is currently in production and has a release date of Dec. 20. How’s that for an early Christmas present?

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There's been a lot chatter in the vast, ever-opinionated movie blogosphere about the 2012 Sundance Film Festival's recently unveiled slate of films. Locally, the inclusion of Cincinnati native Todd Louiso's third directorial feature, Hello I Must Be Going, in the U.S. Dramatic competition is the most intriguing development.

But there's also another noteworthy local Sundance connection this week: Know Theatre is giving a 2011 Sundance film its Cincinnati premiere with a one-time screening 7 p.m. tonight (Dec. 7) in its space at 1120 Jackson St. in Over-the-Rhine. (Tickets are $10.)

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What’s up with the current vampire/zombie craze?

Yes, there’s always been interest in the genre and its preoccupation with the dark side of human nature and sexuality — from the books of Bram Stoker and Anne Rice to the movies of Bela Lugosi and George A. Romero to the television series Buffy the Vampire Slayer. No doubt blood and bare necks and sucking and such will always be alluring, but what is it about this cultural moment in time that has so many geeking out on the idea of the undead?

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The New York Times Magazine's annual Hollywood Issue comes out Sunday. In advance of the print edition, the Times Web site yesterday unveiled an inspired take on the issue's typical photo spread that features the "actors who defined cinema in 2010." Dubbed “Fourteen Actors Acting,” the interactive multimedia supplement is a “video gallery of classic screen types” that features 14 separate shorts directed by fashion photographer Solve Sundsbo, each a minute in length with its own musical score by adventurous, classically inclined Indie artist Owen Pallet (formerly known as Final Fantasy).

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