What’s Good: 12 Netflix Picks

There’s a lot of disagreement in the air these days, in case you haven’t noticed. The one thing everyone can agree on right now is that streaming entertainment is our lord and savior, a recently elevated equivalent to food, shelter, and oxygen in our current hierarchy of needs, and we need some goddamn more of […]

“Reader Beware, You’re In For A Scare!” (#50)

Calling all creeps! If you were a literate kid in the 90s, you almost certainly cracked open a Goosebumps book at some point. With 62 titles in its original run, R.L. Stine’s legendary YA horror anthology is one of the best-selling book series of all time. It also spawned games, toys, lunchboxes, apparel, two major […]

Top Ten Films: 2017

It was a very good year. (At the movies, anyway.)

Dreadfully Distinct: Is ‘2049’ The Greatest Sequel Of All Time?

I hate to react too quickly to any movie, because opinions settle over time. I often see a movie and have a negative reaction, only to find that it sits better over time. Sometimes, I leave a film satisfied, but gradually find reasons to like it less. But it’s been less than an hour since […]

We Won Best Picture.

What a night! Leave it to a telecast celebrating the films of 2016 to have a shocking surprise in store at the end. Last year, the modest Spotlight bested the bombastic The Revenant in the Best Picture race, even after Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu won Best Director. This wasn’t a total shocker, because The Revenant was […]

Ehh ‘La La’: Damien Chazelle’s Sun-Soaked Ode To A City of Stars

Los Angeles is a city paradoxically known for two things: its sun and its stars. Most of La La Land‘s musical moments revolve around one or the other. For months now, the follow-up from the writer/director of Whiplash has been positioned as the front-runner for Best Picture, with plenty of precedent — 2002’s Chicago was […]

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 […]

The Great ‘Beyond’: An Epic Triptych

Is there a male star more objectified than Ryan Gosling? One or two, maybe, but none with as much cred. Ryan Gosling is an Oscar nominee — but possibly not as many times as he should be, in roughly the same position Leonardo DiCaprio was a few years back. Admired and almost respectable enough for […]

Top Ten Films: 2010

As a film school graduate, I’m afraid I have an obligation to take entertainment way too seriously. That’s why, when awards season rolls around, I can’t help but partake in the senseless, arbitrary, and totally nerdy critic’s pastime of ranking all the films I saw and compiling a Top Ten List. And since 2011’s award […]

The Not-Oscars 2011

It’s that time of year again, folks! What I like to call “movie Christmas.” And like an actual holiday, the Academy Awards often end up as more of a disappointment than anything else — any Oscars handed out to not-so-great nominated films like Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close and The Iron Lady can be chalked […]

Top Ten Films: 2011

Is it me, or were 2011’s movies more united by theme this year than is usual? Nostalgia was the big one, with several titles capitalizing not just on our nostalgia of a past era, but of movies from a past era — from silent films to Spielberg blockbusters and everything in between. Films like The […]