“Dumb Money” – Cha-ching! People love to fantasize about striking it rich in various ways. Winning the lottery, nailing the parlay at the track, becoming a YouTube star, or inheriting a fortune from cranky old Aunt Ethyl after she falls into a pile of fur coats and suffocates to death. What’s that? Aunt Ethyl is…

I was going through my DVD collection, trying to find some really top-tier movie that my friend had not seen, and we came upon Leon: The Professional, a great choice. It is really hard to go wrong with one of the best movies ever filmed. To say that this masterpiece is criminally underrated and underappreciated…

Everyone has that relative who loves nothing more than to set up a slide show for two hours of show-and-tell about their recent trip to Baton Rouge. My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3 was a lot like that slide show… [TV suddenly shuts off the football game mid-third-quarter] Aunt Nia: [Sets down remote control] Ok…

There is a certain sensibility to many 1970s Hollywood dramas, a style that has been imitated but rarely truly achieved in any subsequent era, a nihilistic feeling of doom and hopelessness that pervades at least until the sunshine beam of hope cracks through the darkness in the final scene (or not). It’s a blessing that…

“Gran Turismo” – Nerds…in…raaAaAAaaaAaaace. Every video gamer dreams of playing video games as a career profession. I once seriously considered applying for a job as a video game tester that listed among its requirements a “deep knowledge of baseball.” My childhood dream was to become a professional baseball player and a job playing a baseball…

“The Last Voyage of the Demeter” – Batman begins. The following is a series of entries from a critic’s log. 9 Aug, 7:15 pm – While searching for my seat, I am surrounded by groups of people dressed as if it is Halloween. They are not dressed in the cheap outfits found at certain Halloween…