An interesting article* informs me of something that’s both surprising and unsurprising. If you’re a parent of a school-aged athlete, the odds of them being good enough to compete in the college level, much less the professional level, are vanishingly small. Impossible? No. Highly, highly unlikely? Absolutely. Those odds don’t stop parents from pushing, though. When my son was in elementary school, he spent a couple of years playing soccer. There were two things I could always count on when watching a game. The first was my son zipping up and down the field like an enthusiastic puppy and... Read More

There aren’t that many movies that kicked off an entire sub-genre. I’ll concede that, prior to 1995, an awful lot of crime movies existed. You had your action flicks, your mobster movies, and your heist cinema, for example. Jimmy Cagney’s career was built on crime movies, and Marlon Brando won Oscars for On the Waterfront and The Godfather, both of which have to do with the underworld. And then? Heat came along in 1995. At the time, all that was really advertised about the film was that it starred Al Pacino and Robert De Niro. That right there is usually enough to get butts in seats.* But,... Read More

In order to explain to you why I disliked Jack Reacher: Never Go Back so much, I must first explain why I loved 2012’s Jack Reacher. The original film is based on Lee Child’s series of hardboiled novels about the adventures of an ex-military policeman.* It was adapted for the screen and directed by the great Christopher McQuarrie, and it’s a no-nonsense, meat and potatoes action flick. Fight scenes and car chases are well-shot, as the title character Cruise gives a hilariously surly performance as a guy who is basically an invincible hobo, and the villain of the piece is German... Read More