You shouldn’t expect your kids to be into the same things you are. It certainly wasn’t the case with my father and me. Bill was a World War II veteran, a lover of big band music, and a guy with the kind of effortless charisma that made him likable to everyone he came across.* He was also a casual moviegoer. I remember him laughing himself into a mild asthma attack during The Naked Gun, and I remember us seeing both Goodfellas and The Silence of the Lambs theatrically. However, I should emphasize he was a casual moviegoer. Did he care about the works of Altman and Kurosawa? Nope. Not even a... Read More

I’m told that Star Wars  was the first movie I ever saw. My parents made the fairly questionable decision to take two-year-old me to a crowded theater, and my gut tells me it was probably my mother’s idea. At some point, Dad probably said, “It’s not like he’ll remember it.* What’s the point?” Mom probably insisted due to the principle of it, and now there’s a strain of George Lucas’ magnum opus winding its way through the DNA of my childhood. Hardly original, right? For most of us, that’s the reason Star Wars is inexorably tied up in feelings of nostalgia. The warm blanket.... Read More