I‘m a simple man, but I take pleasure in some very specific cinematic delights. I love giant, Godzilla-esque kaiju monsters. I also love several-hundred-feet-tall, mech-suited robots. So back when visionary director Guillermo del Toro announced he was making a movie about huge alien sea monsters entering our world through an inter-dimensional portal on the bottom […]
Film
Posted inCulture
90th Academy Award Predictions
2017 was an incredible year in film
I‘m not a betting man, but if I were, the Oscars are the only thing I’d feel comfortable making predictions about. There are always the things that should win because they’re heads and shoulders above the rest of the nominees, but they’re usually defeated by the things that will win either because of popularity or […]
Posted inCulture
Free to Wait til DVD
The Latest in the Fifty Shades franchise: Still don’t watch it with your family
I planned to see “Fifty Shades Freed,” the new “Fifty Shades” movie, with my ex-girlfriend, because I apparently thrive on uncomfortable situations. This close to Valentine’s Day though, the idea seemed a little too masochistic, even for me. Christian Grey might have relished the idea, but he’s way better at compartmentalizing than I am. Instead of […]
Posted inCulture
Returning to the River
The Upper Columbia United Tribes are once again united by water
“The Grand Coulee Dam murdered my tribe’s history. Murdered the history of all the Upper Columbia and Spokane tribes. Murdered my tribe’s relationship with its deity and murdered our relationship with our futures. For us, the Grand Coulee Dam is an epic gravestone and we Salish people have been mourning the death of our wild […]
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Hated in the Nation
The many sides of Tonya Harding
In the United States. we love our heroes almost as much as we love to watch them fall from grace. As a country, we exist in this feedback loop—a perpetual state of “What have you done for me lately,” expecting our celebrities to entertain us while also giving us plenty of fuel with which to […]
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Legend of the Bored
King Arthur is a swing and a myth
Why is it so hard for Hollywood to get the story of King Arthur right? Cinematic adaptations of Arthurian legend go all the way back to a 1904 silent film based on Wagner’s 1882 opera “Parsifal,” but very few of them have captured what makes the story special in the first place. Films like “Camelot” […]
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Inside Amy Schumer
Snatched is a trainwreck
Sometime after her popularity exploded during the first season of her show, Amy Schumer became not just the most popular female comedian in years, but also a feminist icon almost overnight. She fought back against misogynist culture by not allowing the typical body shaming of the Hollywood elite to change her looks, and her sex-positive […]
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Special Education
Gifted almost finds the heart of mathematics
It can be very surprising how lovely something so simple can be. “Gifted” is predictable, formulaic and deeply flawed, but the combination of perfectly calibrated performances and some honest and charming character work make the film a lovely piece of cinema, at times. The movie doesn’t do anything differently than dozens of other family dramas […]
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Wack Mirror
The Circle screams at social media
The only reason the film adaptation of “The Circle” will be remembered is because it’s the final screen appearance of the actor Bill Paxton after his untimely and shocking death. Not to be overly harsh, but the film is so forgettable that discussing it feels like time that could be better spent focusing on the […]
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We Are Groot
Marvel Studios adds art to commerce
I’ve been reviewing Marvel movies for as long as I’ve been writing about cinema. Truthfully, the Marvel Cinematic Universe is not quite 10 years old (dating back to 2008’s “Iron Man”), but it has completely reshaped how blockbuster movies are written and directed. The staggering number of superhero movies released every year might be easy […]
