Movies reviewed by my 8-year-old daughter

ET: The Extraterrestrial
"It's nice because it's happy and sad at the same time. But you know how it's going to end. How come all these types of movies are the same?"

Shutter Island
"That was more confusing than Lost!"

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She's away this week, with my mother-in-law, but I miss her like crazy already.

Yes, I let her watch Shutter Island with me. Because I'm a negligent parent. It was just one of those days, when my I-just-want-to-put-my-feet-up-and-watch-a-stupid-movie-iveness outweighed any sense of parental responsibility.

But hey. We had some interesting conversations about the Holocaust, and mental illness, and what it means to be criminally insane. She recognized Leonard DiCaprio from Inception. Most interesting: Scenes of the death camp, the ill and emaciated and abused, had Helena asking, "Are those bad people? They look creepy, like monsters." Which points to how we tend to depict monsters physically, and the point that you cannot tell a true monster by how he looks.

And also. As to her reaction to ET, pressed to define "these types of movies," she couldn't, but I'm a little bit mortified — and a little bit impressed (proud) — that she should be at so early an age so jaded wrt the plotting of blockbuster fare.