For like five minutes, I thought it would be a funny idea to start this review pretending like I was doing a deep dive into the new “Melania” documentary, but then I had the (quite obvious) epiphany that giving money, publicity, or my words to propaganda directed by a hack filmmaker photographed cuddling women next […]
Film
15 Insanely Romantic Movies to Watch with Your Partner
I’m not sure if any two people find the same things romantic, but there are still movies and moments I think are absolutely undeniable. After a cozy night in or a decadent night out, here are a few romantic-as-all-hell movies that will play as the perfect nightcap to your special day. 1: “Phantom Thread” (2017): […]
An Evening of Documentary Film Shorts
A one-day film festival will feature more than two dozen documentary shorts made by filmmakers from around the world. The Oregon Documentary Film Festival is being held at The Commonwealth Pub on Sunday, Feb. 15. It begins mid-afternoon with a social networking event involving the filmmakers. An awards ceremony is at 3pm with screenings beginning […]
Snubs, Marketing Budgets and Future Classics
Here’s how I know my brain is a giant old warehouse full of contradictions, out-of-print VHS tapes and Drew Struzan movie posters: I hold space for the two competing thoughts that the Oscars are an out-of-touch racket that only celebrates films with marketing budgets in the tens of millions, while also obsessively theorizing for weeks […]
Memento Mori
When we’re cynical about Hollywood and the movies they make, I think “28 Years Later: The Bone Temple” is exactly the kind of movie that we pre-judge before laying eyes on it. I mean, it’s the fourth movie in the “28 Days Later” franchise, but also the second in a trilogy that began last June […]
The Good, Bad and Average of 2026
The first few weeks of January for theatrical film releases are dichotomous, to say the least. We get a combination of the movies that studios have lost all faith in and want to dump quickly and cheaply released with Oscar nominees and some future winners. It’s the best and worst of what was created the […]
King Pong
I don’t know what you’re after when you watch movies and television. Some people use pop culture as a way to escape the narrow confines of their daily life and only want to be entertained. Others just want to unwind at the end of the day with their brain on low power mode. More and […]
Aliens, Odysseys and a Dunesday
I keep waiting to become more cynical about movies as a film critic. Every week I read one think piece after the next about how cinema is dying and no good movies are made anymore, but 2025 was packed to the rafters with One Masterpiece After Another. In a year with movies like “Train Dreams,” […]
Spectacle Fatigue
I don’t think I’m in love with the “Avatar” films as much as I should be and that might be directly correlated to the number of movies that I’ve seen across the years of my life. I’m fully aware that James Cameron and his team of technical geniuses have, with Pandora, built a world that […]
A Year of Excellence
Every year, when it’s time to make my end-of-the-year list, I realize there are still too many new releases that I’ve yet to see, which is somewhat ridiculous since I actually managed to catch around 150 releases from 2025. That’s plenty. Feels like plenty. Along with all the new shows I tried to catch, I […]

