I have been a movie fan for most of my life and a film critic since 1986 (my first published review was for "Platoon"). Since that time I have written for several news and entertainment publications in California, Utah and Idaho. Big fan of the Academy Awards - but wish it would go back to the five-minute dinner it was in May, 1929. A former member of the San Diego Film Critics Society and current co-host of "The Movie Guys," each Sunday afternoon on KOGO AM 600 in San Diego with Kevin Finnerty.
I was always told that if there isn’t a lot to write about a subject, don’t tax the reader by padding out an article. Nothing could be truer of this advice than my review of the newest release, Machete Kills. I suppose some folks are going to criticize this critique because I do not appreciate…
How far would you go to find your child if he or she were missing? What laws would or should a parent break to make sure they could have their babies back again? These are the fundamental questions asked in the newest film directed by Denis Villeneuve (“Incendies“), Prisoners, which tells the tale of a…
Jayne Mansfield’s Car is a tedious, depressing dysfunctional film about a tedious, depressing, dysfunctional pair of families, headed by patriarchs Robert Duvall and John Hurt, respectively. It seems that 30 years before, Kingsley Bedford (Hurt) stole Jim Caldwell’s (Duvall) wife, Naomi (Tippi Hedren, whose most famous role was in Alfred Hitchcock’s “The Birds“) and took…
In the third installment of this franchise, Vin Diesel proves once again that he cannot act his way off of a hostile planet and that his career peaked in “Saving Private Ryan.” Still, as far as dangerous worlds to inhabit, at least this one in Riddick is better than the one in “After Earth.” In…
I think the first order of business after completing this review would be to sue Warner Brothers, as well as other makers of this film for long-term effects of seizures due to the constant and — at times — almost unbearably shaky, vibrating and just plain jumpy “Cloverfield“-like camera work employed by director Courtney Solomon…
While watching The Mortal Instruments: City of Bones, I tried to keep track in my head the number of other — better — movies this one “borrows” from. It wasn’t easy to try and follow the ridiculous plotline AND count, but a few of the obvious ones were: “Alien,” “Carrie,” “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” “Brave,”…
While I am not crazy about a director including his own name in the title of a film (after all, we never saw a movie called “Orson Welles’ Citizen Kane” or “David Lean’s Great Expectations” or “Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver”), I can sort of forgive Lee Daniels (who directed the equally obscurely titled “Precious: Based…
