Taken from my former online home. My affection for the Fantastic Four exceeds that for any other comic book superheroes, and yet I don’t believe for a second that they’re well-suited for live action adaption. If the reviews for the … Continue reading From the Archive: Fantastic Four: Rise of the Silver Surfer
In picking old reviews that feel appropriate for unearthing in the warmer months, I’ve pulled twice previously from the edition of The Reel Thing, our bygone radio program, that looked back on the top-grossing films of summer 1991. So why not go ahead and complete the excavation of my portion of that particular show. City Slickers finished in the third position on the particular chart. It is with renewed amazement that I look at the numbers noted here, specifically that there were only three movies to cross the $100 million threshold that summer. Now if we have a summer in which only … Continue reading From the Archive: City Slickers
This is a review from early in the run of The Reel Thing, the 90FM movie review show that was conceived twenty-five years ago this summer. (Twenty-five years! Oy!) Plying our critical trade in dinky Stevens Point, Wisconsin made it difficult to fill a weekly, hour-long show with only releases that made it to one of our nine screens. So there were periodic jaunts to the metropolis of Madison to watch and then review films that were probably never going to land in our little burg. This episode this review was drawn from was heavy with those out-of-town titles. Besides … Continue reading From the Archive: After Dark, My Sweet
Again, I’m opting for a timely selection for this week’s rummaging through my older writing, plucking a review from my former online home. As the Marvel Cinematic Universe expands for another highly unlikely hero to saunter in (“An Ant-Man movie?” … Continue reading From the Archive: Iron Man
Now seems an opportune time to retrieve one of the old reviews of a Judd Apatow film that I wrote for an online site, but not this one. My original plan was to post my take on The 40-Year-Old Virgin, which I remember as one of my first stabs at reviving my film criticism for the brave new digital age. It was, but there’s barely anything to the review. It not’s even worth a hyperlink. By the time Apatow’s sophomore directorial effort arrived, I was more clearly back in the realm of full-length reviews. If you want to understand why writer-director … Continue reading From the Archive: Knocked Up
I find it a little dismaying that I can reach back twenty-five years to find reviews that are incredibly pertinent to new blockbuster-wannabe releases. James Cameron attests that the latest stab at perpetuating the franchise, Terminator: Genisys, is the true follow-up to his own final cinematic word the adventures of Sarah Connor and the cyborg assassin from the future. (I’m pretty sure he also once maintained that the theme park attraction he helped direct is also canon.) I don’t blame him for disavowing the other movies, but I know at least a couple people who would argue vehemently (preferably over beers) … Continue reading From the Archive: Terminator 2: Judgment Day
As Ted 2 arrives in theaters, now seems like a good time to offer a reminder that puerile comedy sequels have been a part of summer since the days when Seth MacFarlane was only bothering his friends with inane pop culture references and his sexist, racist, self-involved nonsense. Now he makes millions of it and inflicts it on the whole culture. Thanks again for rescuing Family Guy, Cartoon Network! Anyway, we used a four-star rating scale on our radio movie review show, but one star was generally as low as a film could go. We reserved the 1/2 star and zero star assessments for the … Continue reading From the Archive: Problem Child 2
I’m well aware that not every movie that hits screen in the warmer months is expected to turn into a marauding blockbuster, but I’m still occasionally taken aback by how small-scale some of the summer releases were back in the early-to-mid-nineteen-nineties, when I was still one-half of a weekly movie review radio program. One week before Jurassic Park opened in 1993, one of the two wide release openings was Guilty as Sin, a lousy courtroom drama directed by Sidney Lumet and starring Rebecca De Mornay (who had at least had a surprise hit with the thriller The Hand That Rocks the Cradle the year before) and Don … Continue reading From the Archive: Life with Mikey
Strange as it might seem, this week’s From the Archive selection is by request. Out of the blue, I was asked by a friend, “Have you seen In the Bedroom and Little Children?” I answered in the affirmative, then sheepishly noted … Continue reading From the Archive: Little Children
We had a few traditions on the movie review radio show The Reel Thing. The one that was in place from the very first episode involved spending our first episode in September discussing the biggest box office hits of the summer. Hence the inclusion of earnings analysis alongside the quick breakdown of the film’s quality. (And how adorable is it that the fifth biggest film of the summer has a total take that now looks like a respectable opening weekend for a hit.) My recollection is that we usually looked at the top ten highest-grossing films, but my memory might be faulty, … Continue reading From the Archive: Backdraft
Coffee for Two 