Oscar nominations are announced in about a week and a half. I've seen lists of movies with great performances or just great movies in general from this year, and I haven't seen many of them. But I have seen The Dark Knight. A couple times. And like the years E.T. and Star Wars came out, this comic book movie is the popular favorite for Best Picture. And Heath Ledger is a lock for Supporting Actor.

It's been hard for me to get out to the movies this year. I spent a few months out on the road, and every time I seemed to have a few hours to spend in a darkened theater, I'd look at the choices and decide to do something else.

The last movie I saw in a theater was Vicky Christina Barcelona, which was funny and sexy and beautiful and Woody Allen. That was months ago.

But I pretty much abuse my Netflix account when I'm in town. I've watched great movies and horrible ones. Although, I will eject the bad ones on occasion. My record is about ten minutes of a movie called The Apple. It's a musical odyssey made in 1980, but set in 1994. Why do I know this? Because they said, in the first ten minutes, that it was 1994 about ten times. This is the future! it kept saying. And the future, oddly, looked like the future in Bill & Ted--with worse music! The two songs I made it through (one was supposed to represent the state of pop music in 1994, the other was supposed to change pop music, which I assume happens over the course of the movie) were awful. Barely songs at all, mostly just choruses--and in the case of the initial pop song, I couldn't even understand what they were saying. It probably didn't help that the disc was screwed up, either. But still, stay away from this flick at all costs. It was called a cult classic, but if there's a cult out there worshipping this crap, they should consider a Jonestown Kool-Aid party.

Phew. That's a lot to say about a movie I really didn't even watch. To cleanse those ten minutes from my mind, I watched Once, which is a great little flick about writing and recording a song. Y'know, a real song. It's easy to go wrong with movie musicals, and it usually starts with the songs. If you don't have good songs, then all the dancing and costumes and ludicrous story lines won't fix it.

I'm gonna work with an old friend to write a script for a sex comedy over next weekend. The thing about comedies is this: you gotta have some great jokes. Both physical and verbal. The aim is to have at least two jokes a page. This means you just keep throwing the gags as fast as you can, and hopefully more of them stick than fall flat. Good comedies are hard. And acting in a comedy is hard, too. Just ask Dane Cook. A very unfunny comedian who actually excels at NOT being funny onscreen. The only thing I can guess about his popularity is that he's good looking. Most comics aren't, so this must be his shtick.

Entertainment Weekly put a top 25 comedies to rent during the recession (y'know, to raise your spirits rather than being depressed about the ten cents you've got left in retirement), and there are omissions...oh wait, it says of the last 25 years. But it has Vacation, which came out in 1983 (it's 2009 people!). So just to remind those who don't think back far enough: Caddyshack. And Animal House. Those two will put most of the movies on this list to shame without batting an eye.

I also found out yesterday that one of the guys in my band hadn't seen either This Is Spinal Tap or Heathers. I will be rushing him a DVD care package later today. I would compare this to someone saying they've never tried having a cold beer on a hot summer afternoon.

There are some years when a lot of great movies come out. 1999 is always my example for this: Fight Club, The Matrix, American Beauty, The Sixth Sense and Payback blew me away when the most anticipated (and most disappointing) flick was the first of the Star Wars prequels. And the most surprising hit was The Blair Witch Project. Marketing sometimes works really well. Suckas!

And then there are some my own personal cult classics. Josie & the Pussycats (great songs, hot chicks and hilarious), True Romance and Pump Up The Volume (2/3 of a trinity of great Christian Slater flicks), Wet Hot American Summer (should have been on that EW list of funny movies), Wag the Dog, Valley Girl and Blue Crush (because hot chicks on surfboards is, well, hot).

But for the overload of uber-patriotism, really pretty actors trying hard to act, early CGI that works and crazy over the top violence: Starship Troopers.

Sometimes one shouldn't think too hard about it all.

Matt Worley watches more movies on his TV than TV shows.