Piers Marchant

Few film experiences are more deeply satisfying than watching a psychotically disturbed villain get what's coming to them. It's one of the key emotional resolutions in all of cinema, so why, then, do so many, many films get this simple, primal act so terribly, terribly wrong?

There are precious few films that deal head-on with atheism (excepting noted non-believer Bill Maher's recent documentary film Religulous), but there's certainly no lack of films that, we shall say, are highly suggestive that this whole religion thing might just be in our heads.

As an integral part of human culture, food sits right up there along with sex and violence, and therefore, gets a lot of play on the big screen. Cinematic food is a tricky business, though. Like a TV commercial it has to look appetizing (unless, of course, the point of its being there is to suggest the opposite), unlike a TV commercial it also has to look realistic, be consumed by actors for take

The Eater: A 25-foot Great White Shark. The Food: Sunbathers, kids, dogs, naked women, Quint The Hitch: Once the first couple of people are eaten, about a thousand boats filled with drunk assholes hit the water in an attempt to reap the reward for its capture...

The Eater: Anton Ego (voice of Peter O'Toole), a snobby French food critic (is there any other kind?) taking in the culinary landscape of a once famous Parisian restaurant formerly gone to seed, but perhaps enjoying a miraculous revival. The Food: As the film's title might suggest, a carefully prepared country dish of exquisite vegetables, expertly prepared...

The Eater: Morgan Spurlock, the documentary's director. The Food: A straight month of Mickey D's, everything super-sized when asked. The Hitch: Spurlock intends to find out what happens if he eats nothing but fast food for every meal...

The Eater: A group of women gathered in Chicago to attend a fancy dress-fitting in anticipation of their friend's upcoming nuptials. The Food: All you can eat meats of various types from a shady Brazilian steak house. The Hitch: The restaurant, somewhere in an unsavory part of town, and chosen by Maid of Honor Annie (Kristen Wiig) gives them all pretty horrific food poisoning...

The Eater: Alex Whitman (Matthew Perry), a New York-based project manager for a high-flying restaurant chain who's come to Las Vegas to oversee the construction of a new franchise. Shortly after he first arrives, he has a one-night stand with Isabel (Salma Hayek), who gets pregnant...

The Eater: Albert (Michael Gambon), a crass and cruel high-level criminal who enjoys coming to the same fancy restaurant every night to berate the staff and enjoy a meal prepared by head chef Richard (Richard Bohringer). The Food: Michael (Alan Howard), the former lover of Albert's wife, Georgina (Helen Mirren), whom Albert murdered earlier...

The Eater: A smattering of friends and family of restaurateurs Primo (Tony Shalhoub) and Secondo (Stanley Tucci), owners of a failing Italian restaurant, who are hoping to make a giant rebound. The Food: A showcase Italian meal of many, many courses, culminating in the infamous timpano, a giant enclosed dome filled with pasta, meatballs, prosciutto, various cheeses, salami, and hard-boiled eggs...

The Eater: Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn), an impressively big dude with something of a difficult disposition. The Food: Slices from Sal's Famous The Hitch: Raheem is already pretty unhappy with Sal (Danny Aiello) for making him turn down his giant radio, when gadfly/provocateur Buggin' Out (Giancarlo Esposito) enlists Raheem to support his boycott of Sal's Famous (to protest Sal's only including Italia

The Eater: Katniss Everdeen (Jennifer Lawrence), a teenager selected to compete in the annual cruel and barbaric tradition that pits teens from 12 area districts in a fight to the death. The Food: A loaf of bread, made by the baker father of Peeta Mellark (Josh Hutcherson), who sees Katniss starving and performs a not-so-random act of kindness for her and her desperate family by tossing her one of

The Eater: Two-timing husband Joey Boca (Kevin Kline), a charming and successful pizza shop owner, who has long been cuckholding his wife. Unbeknownst to him, his wife, Rosalie (Tracy Ullman), has found out and is hellbent on a very serious kind of revenge spurned on by her extremely unforgiving mother (Joan Plowright)...

Let's just say her death is about as interminable as the two dreadful Matrix sequels put together on an infinite loop. Can we speak here and now on the subject of extended, overly dramatic dying scenes? As our adroit disgruntled narrator explains to us in painstaking detail during this clip, less is most definitely more when it comes to these things...

You could look up the plotline on IMDB, but what's the fun in that? From what we can tell, scary older lady is menacing to young, vivacious beauty, who apparently has a hell of a pitching arm. Old lady is so evil that after her head explodes she's still able to lumber around for several long seconds...

The problem here isn't the manner in which John McClain finally tricks evil German Hans Gruber (though good luck getting mailing tape to stick to a sweaty back!), it's Hans' complete disregard for his own life. Dude, you are hanging by a thread from about 40 stories up, with the one person who could possibly save you leaning out the window with his hands in the proximity of yours...

This is all about that heart-breaking shrug the man in the white suit exhibits right before collapsing, a "what can you do?" moment that somehow captures the very essence of villain death scenes in chop socky films such as this. Our hearts go out to him...

Okay, so maybe the 1973 circa Roger Moore James Bond was a wee bit more cartoony than our modern Daniel Craig version. You almost have to feel for poor Yaphet Kotto as he frantically points out the sharky danger swirling around them after they hit the water, but alas for the predator, Bond has seen fit to blow up his adversary the old fashioned way...

Speaking of sharks, who wouldn't want to see a bunch of rich, yacht-riding, tux-wearing dbags get all chawed up by a shark the size of a Greyhound bus? To make things even more pleasurable, some of the men exhibit particularly boorish behavior (stealing a lifejacket off a scared blonde woman...

You've no doubt gotten to see this one a few times already, as it became an internet sensation not that long ago, but there's so much more to enjoy here than just that admittedly brilliant sequence. If you want to go straight to the death scene, be our guest (begins at the 2:10 mark), but you'll be missing out on a whole bunch of other, equally enticing things, including a bitch beat-down by a wom