There’s a moment late in the new indie drama Mickey Hardaway where we hear repeated audio from newscasts. Each anchor uses nearly the same phrasing when they say, “a Black male, mid-twenties, with a gun.” That phrasing conjures a mental picture. That mental picture is the first link in a chain, one that ends in […]

A little research tells me a chunk of biker gangs remain involved with the drug trade, weapons dealing, and other criminal activity. Hasn’t it always been that way? Haven’t bikers always been the modern day equivalent of the Mongol hordes, sweeping across the American landscapes like leather-clad locusts? They’re nothing but a bunch of criminals, […]

Like the MCU, Pixar has been in a bit of a tough spot as of late. Initially, they were arguably the gold standard in family entertainment, perhaps even more so than Disney Animation itself. Whether you saw Toy Story, Ratatouille, The Incredibles, Up, or Inside Out, you were virtually guaranteed a film that was clever, […]

You can’t understand how massive Will Smith was, not unless you were there. These days, he’s still ubiquitous. My son, Liam, knows who he is, as do his friends. Will Smith is, to his generation, the same way that Frank Sinatra was to mine. He’s a celebrity, only one that isn’t a cultural driver the […]

When is a hit not a hit? When it’s Furiosa: A Mad Max Saga. We’ll get into the review specifics in a moment, but before we do, please allow me to paint you a picture. I didn’t see this film at a critic’s screening, surrounded by a bunch of egghead movie nerds like me. Like […]

If you ever want to really check your humility level, try writing about a subject you’re ignorant on. I like to think of myself as a relatively intelligent person. Want to talk about politics or current events? I can handle myself okay. Literature more your thing? Cool, we can talk about books and/or writing.*  Movies […]

When you boil it down, there are two kinds of movies. The first are studio movies. These range from the (formerly) unstoppable juggernaut of the Marvel Cinematic Universe to dramas directed by Clint Eastwood. They come from a major studio* such as Disney, Universal, and others. Whether or not these films are actually good, they’re […]

Things change. Sometimes it’s slow, other times it’s terrifyingly fast. Movies are no different. As a member of Generation X, the forgotten generation, my experience growing up was that seeing movies theatrically was a central part of the cultural conversation. At school, we’d chatter excitedly about Ghostbusters. The standard-issue date involved dinner and a movie. […]

It feels like I’ve spent an upsettingly large portion of my life trying to convince people to take movies seriously. Hearing movies referred to as “content” will never not be annoying. Just as irritating is when I’m talking film with a normie and they use some variation of the phrase, “Why do you care about […]

If you’re a reader of a certain age, you likely remember the television series Moonlighting.* The show concerned a private detective agency, as so, so many shows did back in the good old 1980s. For the most part, the episodes were a mystery-of-the-week type of thing, and if it were only that kind of a […]