“Okay To Go” (#94)

In 1997, Contact was something of an anomaly — the “hmm…” to Independence Day‘s “wow!” It was cerebral and character-driven, but released in the midst of summer blockbuster season, just one week after Men In Black had blessed the 4th of July with its second Will Smith-starring extraterrestrial-themed smash hit in a row. Contact cost […]

In A Lonely Place: ‘Ad Astra’ & ‘The Lighthouse’

Without mankind’s inclination to push the limits of possibility, we wouldn’t have a number of scientific achievements we benefit from today — and we wouldn’t have a lot of epic movies. In one of 2017’s best films, The Lost City Of Z, James Gray took Charlie Hunnam and Robert Pattinson to the unexplored, inhospitable jungles […]

Abe Is Enough: ‘Lincoln’ Emancipates Spielberg From His Usual Tricks

Four score and seven years ago, it was 1925. That’s not really relevant, but it seems difficult to write a review of Lincoln without including the man’s most famous phrase, even if not that many people even know how many years “four score” is, and even if that’s the least important aspect of his Gettysburg […]

Trailer Trash: Steven Spielberg // ‘Lincoln’

The Oscars are coming! The Oscars are coming!

I Need A Hero: Is Tom Cruise Still The Best Action Star We’ve Got?

(Movies discussed in this post: Mission: Impossible — Ghost Protocol, Captain America: The First Avenger, and Rise Of The Planet Of The Apes.) I had the makings of a fanboy. Things could very well have turned out differently for me, had I continued my worship of Batman and the T-Rex instead of turning my eye […]