There is a strong body of evidence in Man on Fire (2004) to suggest that the Tripods in War of the Worlds began losing interest in galactic conquest as a result of Dakota Fanning’s perpetual screaming. It was a painful example of lax parenting and a dysfunctional familial structure having an adverse effect on those…

As you might already know, I’m a huge fan of history. Whenever there is a movie about a historical event, I’m in. I did not know that The Lost City of Z was non-fiction, having not read the book, nor did I do any research prior to the screening. All I knew about it was…

In 1999, George Carlin recorded a set called You Are All Diseased, in which he did a segment ranting about the then current obsession with children. Not that that obsession has abated at all over the last two decades, but he specifically went off about parents overloading their children with structure and play dates. After…

To quote myself from my Beauty and the Beast review, “I realize I am not the intended audience for this film.” The difference with Going in Style is that I should be. Just because the average age of its three stars (Morgan Freeman, Alan Arkin, and Michael Caine) is 82 doesn’t mean that non-octogenarians can’t…

What do you get when you cross Blade Runner with Robocop and sprinkle in a little Johnny Mnemonic? A movie during which I almost fell asleep. Twice. To be fair, I had to wake up before five o’clock that morning to get to a meeting, but a loss of an hour of sleep isn’t enough…

Don’t you hate it when the first half of a movie is really good and the second half is a mess of shit? Welcome to Life, a movie that builds some of the best tension I’ve seen in years, then loses its mind in the interest of novelty deaths. Life reminded me a lot of…

Land of Mine (sandet) 1 hour 40 minutes, R for extreme bodily mutilation. Fair Value of Land of Mine: $9.00. It falls in a middle range of films about ordnance disposal, better than The Hurt Locker but not as good as Bravo Two Zero. The Summer Camp from Hell: To the innocents are bequeathed the…

I get that I am not the audience for Beauty and the Beast. I am not a fan of musicals. I am not a ten-year-old girl who doesn’t care about plot holes or young women being held against their will. I do not find buffaloes attractive, not even rich, royal buffaloes. I do not care…