Movies don't make much sense if you miss the first 20 minutes.

Especially if you miss the first hour and 20 minutes and think you only missed twenty minutes.

I had a lot of homework Saturday night, so I decided to stay in and get some homework done before going to see the LateNight movie at the HUB.

And by stay in and get some homework done, I mean nap, eat lots of Chinese food, read, watch a bit of Monty Python's "The Meaning of Life," debate if girls kiss other girls to just to get guys' attention and chat on instant messenger.

Around 11:30 p.m. I settled down to start my paper. I had to hurry because the movie was starting at midnight. But after about 20 minutes, I was summoned to MarioKart.

Normally, I'm not one to quit what I'm doing to play video games. And I lack the elite skills required for such new-fangled games as Halo and Super Smash Brothers. But MarioKart is a classic; a game on which hours of exhaustive middle school competition had honed my control-stick-wielding and button-pressing abilities.

So after 30 minutes of intense racing action, in which Yoshi came in a respectable second-place, I had not only made very little homework progress but I was also late for The Departed.

I ran over to the HUB and, after getting briefly distracted by the varmint-shooting video game, found a seat in the back of the theater.

Immediately, Leonardo DiCaprio started having wild sex with a blonde girl. Then a lot of people made cell phone calls. And then a lot of people got killed. (Sorry if I'm giving a way the plot here, but you could probably figure this out from the trailer.)

I left the theater around 1:30 feeling very confused. How could I have missed so much in 20 minutes?

I asked that question to my brunch-companions the next morning.

"We went to see the movie at 11," one of them said.

11? Didn't she mean 12?

"No, they changed the show times."

And it all made sense. My confusion became far more justifiable. And apparently the movie lasted two and a half hours.

So don't be late to a movie. And if do show up late, at least make sure you know how late you are.

--Ryan Pfister