(March 14, 2024)
So as not to be accused of bad faith arguments, a disclosure: I did not watch the 2024 Academy Awards presentation ceremony. In fact, I don't think I have watched...
(March 7, 2024)
DUNE: PART TWO. Looking back, it seems almost egregious not to have reviewed Dune (2021) at greater length upon its release. But then I remind myself that we live in...
(February 29, 2024)
DRIVE-AWAY DOLLS. With the dissolution of the artistic and commercial enterprise that was the Coen Brothers sometime in the beginning of the end of the world (2018-ish), one of the...
(February 22, 2024)
FEUD: CAPOTE VS. THE SWANS. Whoever said, "Hating someone is like drinking poison every day and expecting the other person to die," clearly never saw The Princess Bride. Of course,...
(February 15, 2024)
Some might say I am not a romantic. I don't think it a fair criticism, nor do I think it's true. At the same time, though, I don't intend to...
(February 8, 2024)
THE ZONE OF INTEREST. Presented with the briefest description of this, e.g. a glimpse inside the domestic life of the commandant of the Auschwitz concentration camp, one's mind might immediately...
(February 1, 2024)
POOR THINGS. Yorgos Lanthimos — born of the glorious, unholy, chimeric union of Luis Buñuel, Ken Russell and Terry Gilliam — has spent much of his storied career exploring parentage,...
(January 25, 2024)
With the joys and horrors of our most recent, apolitical global cataclysm rapidly diminishing beyond the remembering, we return to some version of normal. Which is to say, many of...
Self Reliance, The Beekeeper and The Book of Clarence
(January 18, 2024)
SELF RELIANCE. Having not yet watched Minx — the Starz smut-mag series — I last checked in with multi-hyphenate Jake Johnson for Ride the Eagle (2021), a charmingly unassuming indie...
(January 11, 2024)
GOOD GRIEF. With a brief break in the rain at last, I was in no mood to delve into the weedy waters of grief this week but here we are....
(January 4, 2024)
MAESTRO. Due as much to my penchant for low-culture goonery as anything else, Bradley Cooper's decision to follow up his directorial debut — A Star Is Born (2018), admittedly also...
(December 28, 2023)
ANYONE BUT YOU might have been titled Shakespeare for Dummies, Starring Sydney Sweeney's Decolletage. Earlier this year, a couple of studio comedies (Joyride and No Hard Feelings) threatened to revivify...
(December 21, 2023)
Being that the only notable new release (at least in local theaters) this past weekend was Wonka, a moment of reflection presented itself. Not to dismiss Willy's origin story; to...
(December 14, 2023)
LEAVE THE WORLD BEHIND. A degree of healthy apprehension generally attends the adaptation of a very recent, very successful novel (this one published in 2020 by author Rumaan Alam). Of...
(December 7, 2023)
In an era of lamentation, one that might have been defined by the extinction of boldness in American movies, we may instead have arrived at a moment of renewal. It...
(November 30, 2023)
OBITUARY. There should be something like a Scoville scale for dark humor, gradations of blackness that range from, say, a No. 2 pencil to the underwing of a raven to...