Kristen Stewart is topless in her new movie

The above crappy screencap is from a recent Kristen Stewart flick called Personal Shopper, which may be about a personal shopper for some rich person, but I could be way off line about that. I imagine it is some artsy-fartsy number since it's being made in France so there may or may not be more of that sort of casual nudity so often found in movies made overseas by our artistic superiors, I guess we'll have to wait and see.

Skin is never a guarantee of success in the movie industry of course. They might have tried that with American Ultra which got savaged by the critics (45% on Rotten Tomatoes), but who can say.

K Stew showed some brief skin in that Jack Kerouac thing On the road:

But that flick had a worse Rotten Tomatoes score than Ultra, so those folks that say nothing can save a bad movie might be right after all.

While I'm on the subject -- let me say a few words about American Ultra. I remember the brutal response of critics when this came out. It was so bad that the director was on Twitter and Facebook lashing out at those who savaged his film. The movie is out on cable now. I've seen it a couple of times and don't understand all the hub-bub.

The premise is basic -- a stoner living the blissful life with his stoner girlfriend in some woodsy town in West Virginia isn't the town f*ck up after all. Underneath the haze of pot smoke is a CIA experiment -- a young third strike offender who volunteered for a test program. One that turned him into a programmable killer, embedded with gigabytes of knowledge and killing techniques. When the program was shut down, his memory is erased, he's programmed with enough neurosis to keep him from leaving town or amounting to anything and left to live out the rest of his life in a pot-hazed peace.

Only when someone tries to kill him are his abilities re-awakened, but not entirely, and the movie is about finding out exactly who and what Mike Howell actually is.

Jesse Eisenberg does a good job as Howell. K Stew does a good job as his stoner girlfriend Phoebe, who actually was Howell's handler at the CIA but refuses to come back in after placing Howell in West Virginia. There's the typical over-the-top violence that is prevalent in these comic/drama action flicks and some political themes as the CIA is depicted as an agency of rogue psychos. And the black helicopter crowd's favorite conspiracy of an Ultra program thrown in for good measure.

I simply don't get the hate over this flick. It's on cable now, check it out and decide for yourself. Maybe I missed something. But hey, you got a little Bella Swan skin in the post . . . so there ya go.