Samuel L. Jackson is one of the greatest actors ever to appear in motion pictures. Everybody knows this, and odds are, if you have a favorite movie, he’s in it. He was the soulful hitman Jules in Pulp Fiction. The tough as nails Nick Fury in the Marvel Cinematic Universe. The emerging supervillain Mr. Glass in Unbreakable. Mace Windu […]

My wife is a great deal smarter than I am. To anyone who knows me, that’s a statement as obvious as “water is wet” and “walls hurt when you run into them.” But a while back, she made a comment to me that children’s literature has a much higher quality bar than adult literature. Kids […]

I remember seeing Jurassic Park in 1993. As a callow young punk, my father and I saw it at the dearly departed Village 4 theater in Boulder. I remember gasps from the audience at that first view of the Brachiosaurus.  I remember yelps of terror during the kitchen scene with the velociraptors. But the scene I remember most […]

In 2008, Tom Farley Jr. and Tanner Colby’s excellent book The Chris Farley Show was released. Among other things, the biography of comedian Chris Farley explored Farley’s belief that, as a big guy, audiences only ever wanted to see “fatty fall down.” He felt that audiences would never accept him as anything but a lumbering, clumsy oaf. […]

  On the weekend of May 29, the film San Andreas was released. During that weekend alone, it made over $54 million. That means it’s on track to be a hit domestically. I have no doubt it will be a gigantic success overseas. Star Dwayne Johnson now has the cache to make things happen.* But the question is…why? […]

Hollywood is a place where people who should fail, don’t. It’s where people who deserve to have long careers crash and burn. Earlier this year, Michael Mann’s film Blackhat was released, and it flopped big-time. The man who made amazing films like Heat, The Insider and Collateral, has seemingly lost his touch. Can he regain his mojo? Hopefully. Now […]

Most films have flaws, that’s a given. But there are a few of them out there that are perfect. So much so that you can’t imagine cutting a scene, or removing a performance. They tell their story correctly, with intelligence, style and honesty.  Goodfellas is perfect. No Country For Old Men is perfect. The Silence Of The Lambs is perfect. The […]

Alice (Kristen Wiig) has a prepared statement. She also has Borderline Personality Disorder, a mental illness that has robbed her of nearly everything in her life. She’s lost her job as a veterinary technician, her ex-husband has come out, and her daily routine has shrunk. She lives in a small apartment and endlessly re-watches episodes […]

  In 2008, the fledgling Marvel Studios released Iron Man, starring Robert Downey Jr. Before the release, there were rumblings that the film would fail, and fail big. How could it succeed? It was a movie about a superhero that only hardcore nerds like me had heard of. Plus, Downey was best known not as a […]

In 1923, the New York Times interviewed famed mountaineer George Mallory. When he was asked why he wanted to climb Mount Everest, he simply replied, “Because it’s there.” I suspect the same sentiment could apply to the Steve Jobs and Mark Zuckerbergs of the world, the blazingly intelligent innovators that develop technologies that shift civilization. […]