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...
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 ...
As Meatloaf crooned, "Two out of three ain't bad." Or, to be precise, 13 out of 21 for 62%. My gambit of thinking a pro-The King's Speech surge would carry the film to wins in a number of the lesser categories didn't pay off, but it still won the ...
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 ...
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 ...
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 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 ...
"James, you take movies too seriously." Those words (or ones nearly like them) were spoken to me 24 years ago by my college girlfriend, Tracie. They were true then and, if anything, they are truer today. Ironically, her theatrical experience (among ...
Midnight on December 19, 2001. Having missed the press screening due to a clerical error on the part of New Line Cinema, I was waiting impatiently for the movie to start while lounging in a seat near the back of my then-local theater. The seats weren...
"Dear Mr. Berardinelli, I have been reading your site for many years now and enjoy your reviews and reelthoughts. Actually, I like the reelthoughts better so that's what I'm writing about. I noticed you aren't writing them as often as you used to. I ...
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...
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 ...
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 ...
The first time I watched an Oscar telecast was during the mid-1970s. I don't remember much about it since it started around my bedtime and finished long after I had drifted off. 35 years ago, the Academy Awards were a different sort of program. To ...
It's not that there isn't nudity in films any more. Quite the contrary; approximately 50% of R-rated movies on average have toplessness, bottomlessness, or something in between. What's different in the '10s is that it's rare for one of the leads to ...
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 ...
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 ...