The endgame of most romantic comedies is to get the couple to “and they lived happily ever after.” Right? After all the meet-cutes, bouncy banter, misunderstandings that could have been easily resolved with a conversation, and tearful reconciliations, it all ends with a kiss and the assumption that the happy couple will walk into the […]

I don’t know if you knew this, but The Creator was released theatrically on September 29 of this year. As I write this, it’s made somewhere in the neighborhood of $32 million. Considering it had a production budget of $80 million, it’ll have to do some work over the next few weeks to break even.  […]

You’ve heard from farty old film critics like me that movies have an excess of excess these days. Gigantic budgets, massive explosions and special effects sequences, and runtimes that would test even the hardiest of bladders. People complain about that now. People complained about those very same things forty years ago.  Sure, I get the […]

We don’t see too many elegant movies any longer. Why is that, I ask you? Perhaps part of the problem is that the modern cinematic landscape is separated by a vast gulf. On one side are blockbusters. They’re designed to be big, loud, and appeal to anyone with a pulse and some without. On the […]

“You know what I’ve noticed? Nobody panics when things go according to plan. Even if the plan is horrifying! If, tomorrow, I tell the press that, like, a gang banger will get shot, or a truckload of soldiers will be blown up, nobody panics, because it’s all part of the plan.” That’s dialogue delivered by […]

I usually have my review schedule booked out a few weeks. A number of factors come into play with what I write about. If possible, I don’t want to review too many blockbusters, too many horror movies, too many of the same thing. That sucks for you and it sucks for me. The vast majority […]

Rocky is one of the greatest films ever made by anyone. It’s not hard to understand why. You’ve got a lived-in, realistic performance by Sylvester Stallone, a supporting cast of actors rather than movie stars, and direction that knows when to ease back and when to go hard. Top to bottom, it’s made by people […]

I came across a fascinating op-ed in The Washington Post recently* that dove into the wilderness that many men exist in these days. They don’t quite know how to act. They don’t quite know how to be. They don’t understand what a man is in the year 2023. The question is, do you care?  When […]

The best I can figure, the first movie about Dracula was the Hungarian production The Death of Dracula released in 1921. From there, the bloody floodgates opened. As of this writing, there are over eighty movies about Dracula. Some are good. Others, not so much!* All of them, to one degree or another, were spawned […]

What would you do with a time machine? Go back to make sure you have winning lottery numbers? Jump forward to see how your children turned out? Discover the identity of Jack the Ripper? Take a stroll through prehistory and try to avoid being eaten by a pack of velociraptors? I get it. When the […]