This was written for The Pointer, the student newspaper of the University of Wisconsin – Stevens Point. I tended to pair up a couple of different releases for my weekly column, trying to find some tenuous connection, as I did here. Looking … Continue reading From the Archive: The Last of the Mohicans and Mr. Saturday Night
I regret that not one of the five-hundred-plus words of this review is “Selick.” I bought completely into the hype of the time asserting that The Nightmare Before Christmas was a Tim Burton creation, and anyone else in the credits … Continue reading From the Archive: The Nightmare Before Christmas
Since I started the week out with a sprinkling of unkind words for a Smith father-son collaboration, why not end by looking back to the first time they foisted family time on audiences in the name of art. It was … Continue reading From the Archive: The Pursuit of Happyness
At the point I wrote this, I was fairly certain Michael Keaton was going to transition into an important actor, collecting an Oscar nomination or two as he did strong, compelling work. I was only off by two-and-a-half decades or … Continue reading From the Archive: Pacific Heights
Looking back on this review from the first semester of our radio movie review program, I’m pretty sure I can spot where I was bluffing. Putting together Oliver & Company and The Little Mermaid as equal titles in Disney Animation’s … Continue reading From the Archive: The Rescuers Down Under
There was no question about which director should be represented in this space this week. Sadly, my options were somewhat limited. I would have loved to pull something from my days on The Reel Thing radio show in the early … Continue reading From the Archive: Charlie Wilson’s War
This was written shortly after I decided I was going to use my silly online outlet of the moment to take another crack at writing film reviews, essentially doing so after a layoff of over a decade. I think there’s … Continue reading From the Archive: The Prestige
In the early nineteen-nineties, John Hughes was still enough of an active brand that I could write this entire review of Dutch without mentioning that it was actually directed by someone completely different, all the more notable given that it was Peter Faiman’s official follow-up to Crocodile Dundee, a ridiculously huge hit five years earlier. Hughes’s fingerprints are so messily smeared across the movie that it was — and is — strange to attribute its creative energies to anyone else (Hughes did write the screenplay.) This was released in the summer of 1991. Later that year, Hughes delivered what would … Continue reading From the Archive: Dutch
This wasn’t the first writing I did for my college’s student newspaper, The Pointer, but I do believe it was the first full-length review I turned in. It’s not that much longer than the most robust pieces written for our radio show, right in the middle of its three-year run when this was published, but I presume I was feeling a little more pressure about the word count, evidenced by me essentially make the same point repeatedly in the last three paragraphs. As is often the case with newspapers, I take no credit nor blame for the headline, which I … Continue reading From the Archive: Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country
I’m genuinely excited to see the art house sensation of the moment: Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Still, as someone who believes in the primacy of the director in shaping cinema, I simultaneously keep reminding myself that the … Continue reading From the Archive: Babel
Coffee for Two 