Film

No other actor alive cares more about saving and protecting the theatrical experience more than Tom Cruise. We used to have dozens of movie stars: actors that would put butts in seats just due to their presence in a film, regardless of the quality or content. Back in the day it was Jimmy Stewart and […]

After the crushing disappointment I felt last week after watching the new Indiana Jones, I needed to scale back a little and watch some films that weren’t so deeply connected to my childhood. I went to four movies in the theater this weekend (one of which I won’t write about because I don’t need the […]

Everyone says the older you get, the faster time moves along its ever-shrinking path into the future, but the fact that we’re already halfway into 2023 feels like someone is playing games with all the clocks in my house. It’s been a half-decent half-year for movies, but the real joy for me has been found […]

I struggle with writing about Wes Anderson movies after only a single viewing. Yes, it’s possible to get a solid grasp of the themes and subtext of his films after seeing them once, but his frames are packed with so much nuance and hidden detail that there isn’t a single Anderson movie that doesn’t improve upon […]

Here’s the thing: the older I get, the easier it’s becoming for me to separate the art from the artist. But because my brain is an exhausting wasteland of contradictions, overthinking and burrito dreams, I also think a lot of artists are self-destructive, partly broken and mercurial creatures, who act more with their primordial lizard […]

Well, we’re finally hitting that time of year where some days are so hot that it’s nice to pop into a dark and air-conditioned movie theater, just to watch anything, and get cooled down after a long day in the sun. This last week I saw “Transformers: Rise of the Beasts,” (the entire soundtrack is […]

Just in case you weren’t sure how much I was bullied in high school, my other deep and abiding love, aside from movies, is reading. I try to read 100+ a year (I fail more than I succeed), but a chunk of those are rereads of the man who got me into books in the […]

With the releases of “Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 3” and “Fast X,” we’ve officially landed in Summer Blockbuster Season…whether we like it or not. Looking at the numbers, movie theaters are still struggling to get people through the door, with every barn burner like “Top Gun: Maverick,” “Avatar: The Way of Water” or “Everything […]

What ultimately makes up a movie? Is it just the still images being put together at 24 frames per second or does it need to have a story, a purpose or characters? Those are just a few of the questions running through my head since watching “River,” a movie that neither has a narrative, nor […]