You know it; you love it: your Slops and Props guide to $2 popcorn movies. No film studies degrees here, and no track record of having fetched coffee for Roger Ebert. All you get is the truth. Like Gateway 8 in Federal Way, we're cheap at twice the price. The following $2 movies are now screening at the Gateway 8.

PROPS to Wolverine. You know what's cool about a real wolverine? It doesn't jump down off a rocky ledge onto your back. A real wolverine just glares at you. Don't poke a wolverine. If you do, know your blood type. Tell me that's not cool.

Hugh Jackman is often voted Hollywood's nicest guy. He would prefer not to hurt things. Please just let me chew on my stogie over here, if it isn't too much trouble. What? You flicked my stogie out of my mouth, Bub? Oops, sorry, had to give you a little scratch there. They'll notify your next of kin.

This, of course, is a solid metaphor for the U.S. Army and the U.S. Air Force, which would prefer that Saddam not poke them. They really would. It's way too much paperwork. But, hey, since you did poke us there, B'wana, even you've got to admit that a 100,000-to-17 kill ratio is kind of cool.

Go watch Jackman sulk, and warn people not to poke him. Two bucks for that? All day long.

SLOPS to Wolverine 3D. I'm supposed to go into a dark theater to watch a movie shot at midnight - and then put on sunglasses to view it? Let's call it Wolverine, Murky. Pass-a-deena. If the kids can't live without 3D, go for a cartoon. The colors survive the sunglasses better.

PROPS to Monsters University. A lot of cartoons - er, animated films - run the old bait-and-switch on us. Settle in for toons, end up sitting through a Shakespearean tragedy. We just wind up staring at a lot of creepy, unpleasant voodoo baddies with our kids. Monsters University, wisely, fills the screen with charming, funny heroes, and in a party-college setting to boot. They eat ice cream in the quad and mug for the camera. In the audience, we all get to go back and finish school, this time with a happy ending.

PROPS to RED 2. Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman and Mary Louise-Parker aren't angry badgers. They're friendly, smiling neighbors and they also wish the CIA would leave them alone. None of them are packing retractable claws, but no promises about what else they can pull out of their trench coats.

RED 2 probably has 50 laugh lines in it. The eight primary actors relate to each other in about 50 different directions.

"All I know is women and black ops," John Malkovich tells Willis.

"Those are two different subjects," Willis protests.

The baddie chimes in gravely. "No, grasshopper, they are not."

If you like Willis, you'll love this one.

Also playing at Gateway 8: The Heat, You're Next, Grown Ups 2, Smurfs 2, Turbo, 2 Guns and (whew) two hot dogs for two bucks. Half of them are also offered in 3D. The movies, we mean, not the frankfurters.

GALAXY 8, 2501 S. Gateway Center Pl., Federal Way, $2, 253.945.8230