Longtime MTV personality Kurt Loder has moonlighted as a film critic for years, first for MTV.com and lately for Reason.com, a haven for libertarian thinking that has proven an excellent home for Loder’s writing, which tends to reject the pieties and pretensions of highbrow culture writers. This week brings the publication of his first book of movie reviews, a pleasingly thick 500-page volume called “The Good, the Bad and the Godawful.” To have one’s film reviews gathered into a book is an honor granted to few, and Loder proves worthy of it with this entertaining, insightful and witty guide to scores of the most-discussed films released in the last few years, categorized (for instance) as “Schlockbusters,” “Please Shoot Me” (or movies that no one should ever have to sit through), “Critical List” (movies that inexplicably reaped acclaim), “Looking for Love” (films that should have received more attention–I totally agree that the Jim Carrey Lemony Snicket movie is criminally underrated) and (starring in his own section), “Nicolas Cage,” about whom I (but not Kurt) am starting to run out of mean things to say, even though “Ghost Rider 2” has yet to appear. When I was not yet a critic, I rarely read movie reviews because I hated to have the story spoiled for me. In an important way it’s better to read the reviews later, in anthology form, after you’ve seen the films and can carry on a sort of running argument about the ideas presented. Loder’s volume (like David Thomson’s “Have You Seen…?” which provides one-page reviews of hundreds of classics) also makes an excellent TV-side companion when you’re flipping through the channels wondering what to watch next. Warning: if you pick up the book, you might lose interest in the film you were going to watch.