It took a minute for me to realize that Channing Tatum is, for the most part, awesome. I have to admit that it took a minute. When he showed up initially in the mid-2000s, I figured he was standard issue beefcake, some guy manufactured in a lab deep underneath the Hollywood sign, destined to appear […]

Is nuance dead in America? I don’t think so, but it is apparently very, very sleepy. Everything is binary these days. The enchiladas you ate were either a gastronomical miracle straight from Saint Martha* or a meal of such blistering incompetence that it will summon Gordon Ramsay to wreak culinary vengeance. Same goes for movies, […]

Hollywood is built on sequels. For decades, studios have ruthlessly focused on IP’s and searched for profitable films that can be milked for additional installments. For decades, critics have gnashed their teeth and bemoaned the lack of originality in filmmaking. For decades, audiences have complained about Hollywood never doing anything new and then subsequently flocked […]

A friend of mine once confidently declared that she only watched movies to relax. Needless to say, I was horrified. I was baffled. I couldn’t let it go. “Let me get this straight. You’re not interested in watching great art.” “No.” “You don’t want to see an amazing performance, an incredible script, or peerless filmmaking.” […]

For anybody who likes movies, especially those of us who are approaching or have already reached a certain age, there’s a temptation to drag out the hoary old chestnut of, “They don’t make ’em like they used to.” That statement is the rhetorical equivalent of Schrodinger’s Cat, where it is both true and false at the […]