MINIONS

The previews for the Despicable Me prequel-slash-spin-off Minions made me laugh out loud every single time I saw them ... the first dozen times I saw them. After the second dozen, though, I started to get a little nervous. By then, I had experienced roughly 72 collective minutes of these squat, yellow henchmen with their helium squawks and adorable bulging eyes (or, in some cases, eye), and my initially hearty laughter had been replaced by occasional grins and a smidge of irritation. Granted, I was only seeing three to five minutes of footage over and over, but would directors Kyle Balda's and Pierre Coffin's animated outing wind up feeling the same? Would a solid hour and a half of Minions, and Minions, be too much of a good thing? Answer: Not really. And also: Kind of.

Friday, August 8, 10 a.m.-ish: I'm at The Hundred-Foot Journey, and five minutes into this lighthearted foodie dramedy, I'm already regretting my decision to only have yogurt for breakfast. With director Lasse Hallström's camera slavering over the creation of steaming, succulent pots and grills of Indian cuisine, all of it enhanced by spices and oils whose aromas are practically wafting off the screen, this is not the movie to see if you're hungry. Considering screenwriter Steven Knight's T-shirt-ready dialogue - which features such pithy bromides as "Life has its own flavor," "We cook to make ghosts," and the grammatically vexing "Food is memories" - it's not really the movie to see if your brain is hungry, either.

WHITE HOUSE DOWN

At the start of the Roland Emmerich thriller White House Down, Channing Tatum's military veteran John Cale is seen applying for a position with the president of the United States' Secret Service detail. By the film's end, he'll have rescued hostages, shot innumerable bad guys, ensured peace in the Middle East, averted nuclear apocalypse, and saved the commander in chief's life several times over. In short: most impressive job interview ever.

The first trophy handed out at the 2012 Academy Awards ceremony was for Best Cinematography, a prize that I predicted would go to The Tree of Life but that instead went to Hugo. (Seriously, after his undeserved losses for 2006's Children of Men and now the Terrence Malick film, exactly whom does Emmanuel Lubezki have to do to win an Oscar?) But that was actually my second incorrect assumption of the evening, because as soon as host Billy Crystal stepped on stage, I said to the others at my viewing party, "Here comes the standing ovation," and the audience - despite giving the man a warm reception - remained seated. Did the crowd have a collective premonition of just how spectacularly Crystal would bomb last night?