Recent weeks have seen an online avalanche of top ten lists from movie critics of all stripes. I live in the frigid north, however, and it takes certain cinematic offerings a little longer to fight their way through the sleet and … Continue reading From the Archive: Top Ten Movies of 2006
As I felt compelled to note when I dropped my old review of the dreadful film Dutch in this space, the actor named Ethan Randall noted here eventually adopted the stage name Ethan Embry instead. This was review on a mid-November edition of The Reel Thing, the movie review radio show I co-produced and co-hosted in the early nineteen-nineties. While we were reading about the amazing, artful films that were opening on the coasts to make a run at the Academy Awards, this was the kind of glop that we had to sit in front of and generate a reaction to … Continue reading From the Archive: All I Want for Christmas
It boggles the mind that a film written and directed by John Waters has had such a long afterlife that, nearly thirty years after the original creation, Hairspray can serve as wholesome televised family entertainment during the holiday season. And … Continue reading From the Archive: Hairspray
Here’s another fine example of the strain and struggle I went through to link separate films when I wrote about them for The Pointer, the student newspaper where I attended college. My only real recollection of this article involves being stopped in the hallway of the Communication Arts Center by a professor who skeptically grilled me on whether or not I’d actually seen Sunset Boulevard. I had. The academic should have given me grief over the ridiculous mixed metaphor in the last paragraph. Writers have long been the undervalued heroes of moviemaking. Films from Sunset Boulevard to last year’s Barton … Continue reading From the Archive: Sleepwalkers and White Men Can’t Jump
Usually this weekly glimpse in the rearview mirror dredges up some ancient review I wrote, along with an introduction that involves varying degrees of current anguish over the wonky way I put the words together way back when. This time around, I’m going to opt for something a little different. In honor of Bruce Springsteen receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom, here is, as best as I can digitally collate, everything I’ve written about The Boss. –One of the first time I put fingers to keys to reflect on Springsteen’s work, it was to level a negative assessment of the … Continue reading From the Archive: Bruce
I realize this weekend, I should ideally share an old review of one of the first Harry Potter films, but I barely ever put fingers to keys in service of analyzing those blockbusters. (At the risk of incurring the wrath … Continue reading From the Archive: Flashback Friday – 1981
If nothing else, let the sharing of this today be a reminder that Roger Deakins doesn’t have an Academy Award yet. The first twenty minutes or so of The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford promises a … Continue reading From the Archive: The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford
This was written in late March of 1993, putting it near the end of my five years as an undergraduate college student and my three years as a film critic on radio station WWSP-FM. As for the latter experience, the weariness was clearly starting to show, at least when it came to sitting through the steady procession of drab thrillers that followed the runaway success of The Silence of the Lambs. Since I use the Academy Awards as an entryway into the review, it’s worth noting that the four freshly-named acting winners at this point were Al Pacino, Emma Thompson, … Continue reading From the Archive: Hear No Evil
At the time we were immersed in the movie review radio show, I was actively rooting for the Child’s Play films. Chucky creator Don Mancini was an early interview subject and he entirely won me over with the his enthusiasm … Continue reading From the Archive: Child’s Play 2
My mildly embarrassing true confession is this: I spent most of Wednesday feeling downright woozy, in large part because I was anxious about how a postseason baseball series was going at the time. I’m doing much better now. Still, I’m expending a great deal of energy today in preemptive fretting over the sporting contest set to take place in Wrigley Field this evening. The archive raiding for this Saturday helplessly reflects that. This piece was written when Penny Marshall’s highest-grossing directorial effort was released on home video. Enjoy my litany of early-nineties curmudgeonly fan complaints that leads the review. With … Continue reading From the Archive: A League of Their Own
Coffee for Two 