Rambo is worth taking seriously. Okay, stop. Please, please stop laughing. I’m serious! Well…kind of. I know that in the world of pop culture, Rambo occupies a very distinctive place. A place that’s viewed as anti-intellectual, overly aggressive, and more than a tad racist. Sylvester Stallone’s musclebound murderer has been featured in movies, books, video […]
We can all agree that Stephen Hawking was a pretty bright guy. He took a look at what humanity had been up to and was quoted as saying, “I don’t think the human race will survive the next thousand years unless we spread into space. There are too many accidents that can befall life on […]
Do you know what drives me absolutely batty? When a movie doesn’t know what it wants to be. You’d think that would be reasonably easy to work out, right? Perhaps not, but let’s perform a thought experiment from a couple of angles. Imagine you’re a screenwriter. A major studio hires you to pen the latest […]
Big film genres stick around. As long as movies are a device for long-form storytelling, we’ll always have earnest dramas, goofy comedies, and movies where a guy walks away from an explosion without looking at it. But smaller sub-genres come and go, and we seem to be entering a resurgence of the Yuppies in Peril […]
I love seeing actors take risks. Even more so, I love seeing movie stars take risks. It’s not the kind of thing that happens too often because, like criminals, movie stars tend to be a superstitious and cowardly lot. Considering that the era when a matinee icon could guarantee a huge opening for a movie […]
I kind of hate January. There, I said it. Yes, it’s the first month of a new year, and it represents a new start and new possibilities and blah blah blah. After the warmth of the holiday season, January is cold, bleak, bereft of life. The main reason I hate January, though? It’s the month […]
On July 6, 2016, Philando Castile died tragically and pointlessly. Officer Jeronimo Yanez pulled Castile over during a traffic stop. Later, Yanez claimed Castile was pulled over because he looked like the suspect in a robbery. In the car with Castile was his girlfriend, Diamond Reynolds. Her four-year-old daughter was in the back seat. As […]
My neighbors Jennifer and Paul are absolutely delightful people. Our kids play together, and we’ve made it a point to hang out whenever possible. Paul is a ridiculously talented baker, and Jennifer quietly sabotages the Minnesota Nice caricature with her vicious sense of humor. They’re great…except for one teensy-weensy thing. A while back, we’re all […]
Can we take a moment to talk about Mark Wahlberg?* If you’re in the mood for some whiplash, mosey on over to the IMDB and take a look at Wahlberg’s filmography. There, you’ll see an absolutely baffling assortment of films. Some of them are very good, like Three Kings, The Departed, and Boogie Nights. Some […]
You have an opinion on Tom Cruise. You might be an obsessive cineaste like me, or you might be a casual filmgoer. But I guarantee you that, when I bring up the man formerly known as Thomas Cruise Mapother IV, a person who’s coming up on 40 years in the movie business, you likely aren’t […]
