If you’ve seen a preview for a movie lately, you may have noticed a couple of trends emerging.  One is awesome/lame (which I’ll clarify), the other needs to stop, immediately. The first, is the sudden popularity of the BWWWWAAAAAARRRMM!!!! This, in case you’re for some reason unsure what I’m talking about, is the blast of […]

I need to learn to let it go. You’d think, after the incredibly popular movie Transformers spawned two unbelievably popular sequels, I’d just accept it.  And yet I can’t!  The idea that someone, director Michael Bay, could take a toy from the 80’s and turn it in to a movie about aliens who are living […]

This new series, “For Your (Re)Consideration,” is something I’ve been wanting to do for a while, in order to take a look at older pieces – books, music, movies – that either have been maligned, or have become classic to the point of ignoring.  What I mean is, there are works that everyone hates because […]

So, listen, we all have different feelings about the Oscars…often not great, sure, but there’s something unmistakably alluring about whole thing.  Maybe it’s just trying to identify the “best” movie, maybe it’s trying to identify what will win through examining the odds, maybe it’s just waiting for it to be over so you can huff […]

Dear Hollywood, Look, I know we’ve had our differences over the years.  I know I make fun of you, and mock you sometimes for selling to the lowest denominator and even trying to lower the denominator.  But I like to think our differences have been professional, respectful.  I recognize that you have billions of dollars […]

The Oscar Nominations came out today, and you know what that means!  That’s right!  It’s time for my annual rant to my film students about the meaningless crassness of the Oscar awards!  Hurray!  And this year, you can share in the crabbiness! I know, they seem fun and harmless, but the thing to understand about […]

Today will be the first day of Hanukkah this year, and I was planning this post about it, about the way that our society – in a painfully awkward attempt to be inclusive – turns this minor Jewish holiday into what people assume is the biggest occasion of all.  To gentiles everywhere Judaism consists of […]

Movie theaters have, as everyone knows, grown more and more desperate to lure people back to theaters in recent years.  Attendance has particularly dropped as home theaters have grown more sophisticated and less full of awful people who won’t shut up and oh my god seriously you’re going to answer your phone?  During the finale? […]