We need to get fear back into the vampire tale! I thought that back in 1990. Maybe it was 1991. I’m not sure, because I didn’t write these things down back then like I do now. I had just finished reading Anne Rice’s Queen of the Damned, and I hated it so much I...
Every summer, the Pommeroys vacationed at Laud’s Head, their vacation home on one of the Massachusetts islands, but this year would be more special, because Lawrence, who rarely came to these reunions, was bringing his wife and two kids. The other three siblings–Diana, Chaddy, and the first-person narrator (who’s never named)–looked forward to seeing...
Holly Golightly as a name is ironic, because everywhere she goes, she goes loudly. She’s a seeker with only a vague idea of what she hopes to find. She’s also a runaway with a clear understanding of what she’s fleeing. She might not know where she’s going to, but she knows where she’s been,...
Directed and written by Terrence Malick, 2017’s Song to Song is an experimental film. If you take one thing away from this review, take that. It’s an experiment, and with any artistic experiment, you, the viewer, will either love it or hate it, think it’s innovative and fresh or think it a waste of...
I missed the opening crawl, because some idiot stepped in front of me during it–not once, but twice. I lost my place the first time, and just as I was finding it, he cut in front of me again. And stood there! By the time he moved on, the crawl was over. I hear...
The opening credits justified the admission dollars. That’s a bit of an exaggeration, because who comes just to see the opening credits? But I went to a matinee and received an early bird discount, so there were fewer dollars to justify before I felt I got my money’s worth. As Sigrid sings “Everybody Knows,”...
The Nook, Barnes and Noble e-reader, lacks the same cachet as Amazon’s Kindle, but it has at least one noteworthy feature that makes it the right reader in a specific situation. That situation is when you’re visiting a Barnes and Noble store. While at the store, you can connect to their WiFi and read...
My movie reviews tend to come in three flavors: positive, negative, and neutral. Or in hand symbols: thumbs-up, thumbs-down, or the ambivalent hand wiggle people do to show something is so-so. I’ll give Murder on the Orient Express that hand wiggle to show that it’s so-so, but unlike my other neutral reviews, I have...
Years ago, I added Swordfish to my Netflix DVD queue. I’m not sure why. Perhaps I saw it on some list of movies to watch, or I was just processing Netflix recommendations, or maybe I was looking for thrillers to add, or Hugh Jackman, John Travolta, or Halle Berry movies. I was interested in...
Why do people who make action films believe they need to be mindless entertainment? Why do they think that all we need and want are fist fights, car chases, gun battles, and big explosions? Those are staples of the genre. They need to exist in action films in the same way that kisses need...
