Rewinding 2011: The Top 10 (2011 Dec 31)

Why does someone like me, an avowed list-hater, go through the process of developing a Top 10 list every year? (Not to mention a Personal Top 100, mid-year Top 10s, and Bottom 10s?) This is the 20th consecutive year I have engaged in the exercise ...

Rewinding 2011: 10 Memorable Performances (2011 Dec 29)

What constitutes a great performance? It's an interesting question that should be addressed when one considers best/favorite performances of any year (or other period). For me, a good performance is when an actor/actress does his/her job with aplomb...

Rewinding 2011: The Death of "Film" (2011 Dec 27)

Many times when writing a year-end summary, it's easy to spot the "big" story of the year. On the surface, that's not the case with 2011. By all accounts, at least based on the movies that made it to the screens, this was a very ordinary year, made ...

At What Price Entertainment? (2011 Dec 14)

How much do you pay to see a movie?At one time, "the cinema" was viewed as one of the most economical forms of entertainment. My grandfather told of times when he could get into a Saturday matinee double feature for a nickel. (Okay, so a nickel was ...

The Self-Serving Column (2011 Dec 06)

Initially, this ReelThought was going to be about the insane, must-be-first mindset that is driving film critics' groups to announce their end-of-the-year awards before they have seen the entire roster of 2011 films. It's the same mentality that is ...

The 2011 Turkeys (2011 Nov 30)

Every year, I feel less confident about calling my roster of the worst movies, a "Bottom 10" list. The reason is simple - there are a lot of terrible films I intentionally miss. By all accounts, two of 2011's most abysmal are Bucky Larson: Born to ...

A Few of My Favorite Things (2011 Nov 20)

It is said we re-invent ourselves every seven years. I don't know if that's true or not, but the objects of my childhood and teenage passions are not necessarily the things that occupy my thoughts today. This inconstancy explains better than anything...

The Porn Analogy (2011 Nov 10)

I'm about to make a connection between porn and film criticism... and it has nothing to do with the boobs, pussies, and asses in both areas.When I started reviewing movies in 1992, making money was the farthest thing from my mind. Calling it an ...

A Good Scare (2011 Oct 31)

As FDR famously declared, "The only thing we have to fear is fear itself." To that end, we have an entire holiday dedicated to the experience. Haunted houses, once the province of local impresarios who gathered a few friends and opened an amateur ...

The DVD Collector's Lament (2011 Oct 21)

I have amassed what I consider to be a respectable DVD & Blu-Ray collection: about 1300 movie titles and a fair number of TV shows (although not nearly as many). A few years ago, when I moved into my current house, I thought that by the end of 2011, ...

The Anti-Social Network (2011 Oct 11)

My first encounter with the Internet occurred in September 1985. When I started in the University of Pennsylvania's School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, I was given something called an "e-mail address." Despite being a card-carrying geek, I ...

The Great Netflix Customer Rebellion (2011 Sep 27)

When it comes to Netflix's streaming service, the promise is in the premise, not in the execution. My ideal future movie service would be something that allowed me to box up all my DVDs and not buy another one. I also don't want to have to worry ...

George Lucas: Childhood Rapist? (2011 Sep 19)

Star Wars was not my first love. By the time it came out in 1977, I had already enjoyed flirtations with baseball, astronomy, dinosaurs, and monster movies. I had developed an unrequited crush on Jessica Lange. I had spent countless afternoons ...

The Day that Changed Little (2011 Sep 11)

NOTE: As I was writing this, it occurred to me that so much is being written about 9/11 on its tenth anniversary that there's little (if anything) I can add to the discussion. But, having penned an essay on each anniversary of the day since then (...

Junk Food (2011 Sep 06)

The American appetite for junk food has escalated over the past two decades. When I was a kid in the dark ages of the 1970s, the concept of "fast food" was more a novelty than a necessity. Most of the time when I went out with my mother and ...

Barenaked Actresses (2011 Aug 15)

In olden days a glimpse of stocking was looked on as something shocking. But now, heaven knows, anything goes. (Cole Porter)For boys of a certain age (my age, that is), many experienced their first glimpse of the mature, naked female form via Hugh ...

The Halftime Top 10, 2011 Edition (2011 Jul 12)

I started compiling mid-year Top 10 lists a number of years ago, in large part to argue that there are oases in the vast desert of the early-year movie release schedule. Since that first list was posted in July 2004, the landscape hasn't changed much...