As has been widely publicized recently, studios have decreased the number of films being made available in pre-release screenings for critics. Hardly a week goes by when one or more films is held back from an advance exposure. One might construe ...
There are two ways to look at all the numbers I'm about to throw out: "Just the fact, ma'am" or "There are three kinds of untruths: lies, damn lies, and statistics." It's said there's no time like the present, so let's start there, with the last ...
So what does it all mean? Damned if I know. So here are few musings and guesses. Feel free to disagree. This is 100% opinion.The roughly 80% for Lead Actresses seems like a high number. My guess is that it's higher than that of the actress ...
While regarding the cover of a certain magazine depicting revealing images of Kiera Knightley and Scarlett Johanssen, several random thoughts came to mind. One was to wonder how many Oscar nominated actresses have done nude scenes during their ...
In 1977, when director Richard Donner began filming Superman, he started work on what was intended to be a four hour epic that would be released in two parts. The goal was for Superman to enter the marketplace during the Christmas movie season of ...
Three years ago, New Line Cinema was the toast of Hollywood. They were an unstoppable force, destroying the competition at the box office and rolling to an Oscar blitz. 2003 was, of course, the year when the climax of Peter Jackson's The Lord of ...
Every once in a while, I get an e-mail from someone asking me to write a "real" blog entry rather than a themed commentary. I usually demur, feeling that such "journal entries" can be egotistical and boring. (Unless you're Anne Frank, who wants to ...
The site doesn't quite look the same as it did yesterday. I have been threatening for a while to do some kind of upgrade; I didn't expect it to come so soon. Sometimes I do things impulsively, and this is one of them. The new design is not ...
NOTE: This will be the last "ReelThoughts" entry for a little while. After today, I will turn my attention to daily coverage of the Toronto Film Festival. Barring computer or travel snafus, the festival "blog" will have daily entries from September...
The following quote has been widely attributed to Good Morning America movie critic Joel Siegel: "Time to go! First movie I've walked out of in 30 fucking years!" The movie that so distrubed Siegel is Kevin Smith's Clerks II, a mildly raunchy but ...
Those who are familiar with my reviews know that the average length of one is about 700 words. There are times, however, when I display a tendency to ramble. Often, especially for films in the ** to **1/2 range, I don't have a lot to say. Mediocrity...
$132 million. I'll be damned. I didn't think it was physically possible for a 155-minute movie to make that much money over a three-day weekend.Consider the following... (All numbers are rounded off) Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man's Chest (or...
Once question that has always aroused my curiosity is whether a bad sequel can damage an entire franchise. Or, to put it another way, can a single mediocre movie in a series of otherwise enjoyable films change a viewer's impression of the series as ...
Yes, I'm that one person. The one person who has not read Dan Brown's The Da Vinci Code. While everyone else chatters about the plot's twists and turns, and whether or not it's an affront to adherents of traditional Christian theology, I remain ...
Like all lists, Top 10s are extremely personal. I would be surprised if anyone else (critic or otherwise) has an identical Top 10 list to mine. But therein lies the enjoyment of examining individual Top 10 lists: they provide insight into the ...
One can't toss out a Bottom 10 list without putting it in context. Everyone seems to have a different idea of what constitutes "one of the worst films of the year," and some of these lists become heavily politicized. There are list-makers who ...
Rather than go through the pointless exercise of splitting performances into different categories, this year I have elected simply to take the ten most memorable performances and give them equal weight. They are arranged alphabetically; no ranking ...