‘Phantom Menace’ in 3D: Now THIS is podracing (Movie review)
In the 1983 documentary “From Star Wars to Jedi: The Making of a Saga,” George Lucas talks about how a lot of movies like to show off the work of the construction crew on screen. […]
Movies
‘The Descendants’ another low-key masterpiece from Alexander Payne (Movie review)
I just got done reading Chuck Klosterman’s novel “The Visible Man,” which deals with the nature of reality. In a wider sense, all pop entertainment deals with the problem of reality, because fiction is the […]
David Fincher makes ‘Girl with the Dragon Tattoo’ better than it deserves to be (Movie review)
I subscribe to Entertainment Weekly but I’m not an avid follower of the book world, so I kind of got the impression that EW was forcing things in the wake of “Harry Potter” when it became obsessed […]
John’s top 10 movies of 2011
As always, I start my top 10 movies of the year list with a disclaimer: Since I live in a small town, I haven’t seen well-reviewed films such as “The Descendants,” “Like Crazy” or “Young Adult” yet. When I do, […]
Jason Segel shows us the Muppets have aged well (Movie review)
After a batch of truly terrible previews for Disney-Pixar movies (not only did the movies look bad, the trailers themselves were interminable), my screening of “The Muppets” (a franchise that Disney now owns) finally began — and, […]
Oh my god, they killed Otis! (and thoughts on falls to the dark side) (TV and movie commentary)
Kind of a jerk move by Shane to kill Otis on Sunday’s episode of “The Walking Dead” (8 p.m. Central Sundays on AMC), huh? But also a shocking and fascinating one, and something that could set up […]
‘Paranormal Activity 3’ has the found-footage genre down to a science (Movie review)
Many horror franchises get lazy with each new entry, falling back on what worked in previous installments rather than getting innovative. I’m happy to say that the “Paranormal Activity” franchise is an exception. Although it […]
‘50/50’ shows both sides of the cancer coin (Movie review)
I wasn’t surprised to learn that Adam, Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s character in “50/50,” is based on screenwriter Will Reiser. Adam has cancer, but he’s not an emotional train wreck — that would be the people around him.
Baseball fans will find lots to love and debate about ‘Moneyball’ (Movie review)
“Moneyball” includes so many scenes of Oakland A’s general manager Billy Beane (Brat Pitt) and other baseball people spitting chew into cups that it almost plays like an extended version of that “Naked Gun” riff where […]
‘Blue Valentine,’ ‘It’s Kind of a Funny Story,’ ‘Cedar Rapids,’ ‘Hobo with a Shotgun,’ ‘Hall Pass,’ ‘Skateland’ (Movie reviews)
With a few days off from work and a couple weeks to go before the fall TV season, I took the opportunity to rent some movies that I’d wanted to see for a while that […]