Never shall I forget the little faces of the children, whose bodies turned into wreaths of smoke beneath a silent blue sky. Elie Wiesel wrote that, in his astonishing memoir Night. He survived the Holocaust, and he later wrote about how his faith was consumed by flames. Who can blame him? He, and millions like him, cried out […]

In today’s America, the easiest thing in the world is to be a straight, white male. I don’t mean that us white guys get our pick of great jobs and get handed sacks of money. Instead, we have a base level of presumed competency. If we say to society that we want to become an […]

Dear reader, I have to be honest with you. I have a problem. As much as I want you to read this review of the new film Passengers, you really don’t need to read it. All you need to do is direct your eyeballs up a few inches to the picture of the pretty people, and […]

I’ve always held musicals at arm’s length. I’m weak that way. Everybody has a blind spot when it comes to movies, a certain genre or actor that they just can’t stand. My wife’s aunt has an irrational hatred of Tom Hanks. Every time she sees him in a movie, she shakes her head and says […]

The Star Wars movies are the crown jewel of franchise filmmaking, and sometimes it’s a little hard to see why. Look at it like this: Star Wars and The Empire Strikes Back are classics for a reason. That’s a no-brainer since they are fun, fast-paced, and chock-full of memorable characters. So far, so good. Then Return of the Jedi hits us, and it’s really […]

Work parties are awful. We all know that. But holiday work parties occupy a very specific place within one of the nine circles of Hell. What level would you find mandatory office mixers on, I wonder? Gluttony? Lust? Heresy? All of the above? I know a little something about this. Since I work from home, […]

The day my father died began the same way as any other day. The Earth turned, the sun came up. At the time, I was a hilariously mediocre college student, blissfully pissing away my higher education. That evening, my brother called. He told me that our father was struck down by a combination heart attack […]

There’s good news and bad news. First, the bad news. As you’ve probably noticed, 2016 has been an absolute garbage year. Our country elected a profoundly unqualified narcissist for President, tensions borne from race, gender, and sexual identity threaten to split us apart, and Florence Henderson, the mom from The Brady Bunch just died. Is it because […]

Okay, guys, confession time. Like all right-thinking people, I’ve read the Harry Potter novels and thoroughly enjoyed them. Unless you’re the constantly allergic to fun New York Times,* who wouldn’t? J.K. Rowling single-handedly created a book series that was not just fun and wondrous, but also perceptive, possessing subversive wit, and a profound understanding of the human condition. There’s […]

These are interesting times for science fiction. You can be excused for thinking that science fiction is just shorthand for an action movie set in space, or with aliens, or time travel. Yeah, we’ve had a lot of that, particularly with Star Trek Beyond and Star Wars: The Force Awakens.* But we’re also living in a bit of a […]