Recent viewings:

The Skulls. This movie was savaged by the critics when it came out. It's really not that bad. True, the secret-society antics are silly and implausible. The plot is contrived, and the actions of certain characters are inadequately explained. But it's not nearly as insulting to the viewer's intelligence as, say, Coyote Ugly. There's some pretty photography, especially of the boat race at the beginning of the story; there are some pretty people on screen, and once you've checked your skepticism at the door the plot is sort of entertaining in a tinfoil-hat, conspiracy-theory kind of way.

The basic premise of the movie is that very old and very powerful secret societies at Ivy League colleges exert a tremendous amount of power, have a tremendous amount of money, and do lots of sinister and nefarious stuff in between handing out fancy cars, wads of cash, hired hookers, and social prestige in boatload-sized dollops to their fresh recruits. The protagonist, a poor-but-hardworking athletic-scholarship student at an unnamed Ivy League college that plasters big "Y"s all over its walls and uniforms, is tapped to join "The Skulls", a secret society evidently modelled on someone's perceptions of the "Skull and Bones" society at Yale. (Many people have, of course, noted that George W. Bush, among other political bigwigs, have been part of this group, and the movie's release in 2000 suggests that its producers sought to cash in on the resulting public curiosity.)

Our protagonist's black campus-journalist roommate and his blonde preppie not-quite-girlfriend are taken aback by his sudden and secretive new life. The roommate's instant and inexplicable resentment of his former best friend initiates the plot, such as it is, replete with murder and skulduggery. (Hah!)

As I said, the plot is somewhat entertaining once you check your critical thinking at the door. The only thing truly unsettling was the statement that all members of "The Skulls" were expected to "prove themselves" in WAR. (Yes, the word appears in giant capital letters in the film.) The movie was released in early 2000, well before the 2000 election after which "Dubya" became president. It was three years before George W. Bush launched his pet war in Iraq, and over a year before the September 11 attacks that purportedly provoked that war.

How did they know?

Perhaps someone should check into the background of the screenwriters and find out if they had Secret Knowledge -- or, even more intriguingly, if any of them have suffered mysterious "heart attacks" or been "disappeared" to Guantanamo Bay, or to private, exclusive "mental hospitals" in the past few years.