By PETER HARTLAUB, San Francisco Chronicle

Marion Cobretti dispensed no end of fantastic advice in the 1986 film "Cobra." This was, after all, the man who said, "You're a disease and I'm the cure" and "This is where the law stops and I start ... sucker!"
But it was a lesser-known Cobretti line -- "You're history!" -- that turned out to be the most prescient.

John Cena's first film, "The Marine," was a throwback to 1980s action movies, with diabolical bad guys, minimal dialogue and two scenes where the World Wrestling Entertainment star dives headfirst out of thermonuclear-looking fireballs.

Wes Craven had never directed a movie when he made "The Last House on the Left" in 1972, and didn't expect to make many more. But the notoriously graphic horror film was a huge hit, allowing him to follow up with "The Hills Have Eyes," "A Nightmare on Elm Street," "Scream" and other classics.

With apologies to "Bull Durham" and the original "The Longest Yard," it's hard to beat basketball movies in the pantheon of sports cinema. There have been great dramas, great documentaries and even a pretty good Fred MacMurray Disney film.

Peter Ferioli has been going to comic-book conventions for so long that he remembers when people actually came to buy comic books.

In a perfect world, someone would give "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" an honorary Oscar for Best Movie That Doubles as a Nonprescription Sleep Aid. A nod in a couple of the technical categories would also be bearable -- maybe one of the Visual Effects categories or Makeup.
But not Best Picture. Not in a million backward-aging years.

These winners, all from the past 20 years, didn't deserve their Oscars. The award is named after the 1997 movie "Titanic," which won Best Picture in 1998 instead of "L.A. Confidential."

Best Picture

While we're hoping that "Crips and Bloods: Made in America, " the documentary by "Dogtown and Z-Boys" director Stacy Peralta (and producer/point guard Baron Davis) is great, we're worried what it's going to do for the gang-film genre as a whole.

Hollywood takes another stab at "Friday the 13th" this week, and the odds that we'll see a fantastic piece of filmmaking are slim.
From Gus Van Sant's attempt to remake "Psycho" to the abominable update of "When a Stranger Calls" (with cell phones!), horror remakes have been plentiful -- and almost universally worthless.

With the country deep in a recession during Super Bowl XLIII and needing a laugh, the advertisers instead gave us a snow globe in the crotch.