“Help Me Help You” (#99)

By the time I was pop culturally aware, Tom Cruise was already taken for granted as a movie star. He was always there, grinning and waving on red carpets, on the cover of all the tabloids and more legitimate magazines, every movie he was in an Event (and a hit that warranted the event status). […]

Best Of The Decade: 2010s

A decade at the movies is serious business. When the 2010s began, Avatar had just opened in theaters. It went on to top the all-time box office and spawned the short-lived resurgence of 3D, a fad that has mostly died out (again). Netflix, then known for its DVD rental services, was just beginning to expand […]

Top Ten Films: 2019

Hello. Thank you all for coming. We are gathered here today in remembrance of The Motion Picture. The Movies were born in March 1895. They lived a vibrant, storied life. It was not until 1927, at the age of 32, that they learned to speak. Soon after, they learned to sing, too. They became more […]

Irish Goodbye: Martin Scorsese’s ‘The Irishman’

Believe it or not, it’s been nearly 30 years since Martin Scorsese made GoodFellas, one of the auteur’s least disputed masterpieces. The film was nominated for six Oscars, including Best Director and Best Picture. Joe Pesci won Best Supporting Actor. Scorsese’s name has been mentioned in a lot of film criticism lately, and not just because […]

Top Ten Films: 2004

(A “Then & Now” perspective.) Like my 2005 list, this Top Ten comes at you twenty strong, because that’s how I wrote it back in the day on my LiveJournal. And like last time, I’ll be adding my commentary about how the movies have held up 11 years later, because tastes change. Some of these […]

Top Ten Films: 2006

Continuing my retroactive Top 10 lists, this one takes us back to 2006, originally published in my “Confessions of a Dangerous Film Student” column in INsite Boston.

Roger & Us: The Critic Becomes The Star In ‘Life Itself’

The story of Roger Ebert is a curious one. The man didn’t set out to be a film critic, but he ended up being the film critic. He’s still best known as the owner of one of two fateful thumbs from his days on TV, and if you know him only as the crotchety critic […]

The Not-Oscars 2013

It’s the morning of the Oscar nominations, and I’m not upset. This is weird. All the films I wanted to see nominated for Best Picture are. All the actors I hoped to see receive nominations for this year’s performances were. Compare and contrast to last year’s fatal omission of Kathryn Bigelow as Best Director, or […]

Top Ten Films: 2013

Hollywood is obsessed with money, I say. Duh, you think in response. But hear me out. In 2013, Hollywood was particularly obsessed with money. Not just with making money, but with telling stories about making — and losing — money. In my Top Ten list last year, I named Zero Dark Thirty my favorite film […]

Big Good ‘Wolf’: Scorsese’s Latest Is Excessive To The Max

Is Leonardo DiCaprio this generation’s Robert DeNiro? Yes — at least in the sense that he’s Martin Scorsese’s current muse, and yes in the sense that the movies he stars in tend to have some very hefty running times. From Titanic, the blockbuster that made him an international superstar, to The Aviator, his previous three-hour […]

Hard In The City vs. The Oscars: Live Blog & Winners 2011

Since my live blog of the Golden Globes this year was surprisingly popular (really, I didn’t think anyone would care what I have to say), I am again live-blogging and tweeting up a storm for the Academy Awards this evening. Should you need them, here are my predicted winners.

Gold Rush: Oscar Predictions 2012

Though so many of us take the Oscars very seriously (guilty as charged), really, it’s just a game. It’s no different than the Super Bowl, except there are about five teams playing in every “quarter” and it’s actually quite embarrassing to be wearing the same outfit as anyone else. No jerseys on the red carpet. […]