Please note that the following applies only to those who download movies and TV shows from the Net for fun, not profit. It doesn't apply to those who make money from the copyright infringement of others. Those people should be pursued and punished ...
Time constraints don't permit me to go into great detail now about my opinion of the film. (Seeing four films and writing four reviews in less than 48 hours limits available time.) That's what the review is for, anyway. Suffice it to say that I ...
If you are a documentary lover, this is as close to heaven as it gets this side of a film festival. A few years ago, documentaries were few and far between. Even in art house theaters, only the occasional high profile effort like Hoop Dreams or ...
It's a well-known truth that there are no new stories to be told. But I wish Hollywood would do a better job of dressing up the old ones so it doesn't seem like every movie is a carbon-copy. As if it isn't bad enough that seemingly 1/3 of the high-...
My decision not to review Saw II has generated a surprising volume of e-mail. Keep in mind that a decision on my part not to see and/or review a movie is not an attempt to make a statement about the film's quality. After all, until I have seen ...
There are two philosophies of how a public (or semi-public) figure should react to an attack. The first states that ignoring it is the best approach. The attacker is looking for attention and validation and to give it to him/her is to satisfy a ...
I'll give George Lucas a pass on his massive merchandising - from action figures and trading cards to lightsaber replicas - and his reworking of the original films. I'll even accept the umpteen versions of the films that have come out on VHS, ...
Now that seemingly every third motion picture is a sequel, the question has to be asked: How does a subsequent installment of a movie series impact the viewer's impressions of what has gone before? It's a tricky question, and not one that many movie-...
I was a writer long before I began penning reviews, and I was a perfectionist long before I started writing. Perfectionism is good in science and engineering, but it's a terrible burden for a writer. Nothing is ever good enough. Re-writing becomes...
For me, the year in movies 2005 is over. I have seen everything I'm going to see. (The exception is Wolf Creek, about which I'm on the fence. Roger Ebert and I don't always agree, but zero stars?) So I'm now in a position where I can look back on...
As of a couple of weeks ago, every Star Wars fan had the opportunity to add the final chapter to his or her six-volume DVD set. And, judging by the crowds at Best Buy, that's what everyone was doing. Shopping that day was an odd experience. ...
Normally, I'm not a conspiracy theorist. In fact, I'm a card-carrying unbeliever. While I don't accept that Lee Harvey Oswald acted alone, I don't subscribe to the theory that Lyndon Johnson was behind the assassination. I'm not a "UFO person" (...
There is a certain kind of movie viewer who wants to know the entire plot of a film before it opens. Such a person delights in uncovering clues and finding out things first. For him or her, movie-going is the culmination of a long treasure hunt. ...
For those who have written expressing weariness about my "endless" reminiscences about Star Wars, you'll be glad to hear that this isn't another one. (Thanks to the one person who enjoyed all the Star Wars stuff as "a break from [my] usual cynical ...
Seven years ago, I wrote a piece for a now-defunct web magazine about five young female starlets who I thought had the potential to become major Hollywood stars. The only requirement placed on the article by the editor was that my choices had to be ...
Sorry if some of this sounds redudant, but it's on my mind today...Two days after I wrote a piece on illegal downloads, the story got life in the mainstream media when it was revealed that a work copy of Revenge of the Sith appeared on-line for ...
Though the weather may still be warming, summer always comes early to movie theaters. This weekend in fact, with the opening of a couple of high-profile pictures: The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy (about which I am guardedly optimistic) and XXX: ...