Search for Eric

Woodstock - the shining moment in the age of peace and free love, the incredible high that came before the bad trip of the '70s - is often remembered most for the music. This is due in no small part to Michael Wadleigh's definitive documentary. F...

The same questions accompany The Thing that accompany any revival of an '80s property, be it Conan the Barbarian, Fright Night, or Footloose (to name only a few of many, many candidates). First and foremost is "Why?" However, while it may seem unne...

It appears that Marvel has given up trying to broaden the tent. Although Thor: Ragnarok, the third film to focus on the exploits of the titular Norse God, boasts a lighter tone, when the flippancy is stripped away, it’s the same-ole-same-ole...

Thunderbolts*, Marvel’s entry into the early summer box office sweepstakes, is a comic book film of a different sort. While most of the expected tropes are present – big battles, costly action sequences, a threat to life on this planet – tho...

Following the disastrous Even Cowgirls Get the Blues (my selection for the worst film of 1994), it's a safe bet that Gus Van Sant's next move had to be a proverbial "step in the right direction." In fact, with the biting satire To Die For, the dir...

Top Gun: Maverick is one of those rare breeds: a sequel that’s better than the original. Due in part to the passage of 36 years in between installments, the second film arrives with a less glossy, more serious approach. Cold war rah-rah machismo...

As much heralded, "edgy" movies go, Transamerica fails to live up to expectations. The final 30 minutes are interesting, funny, and affecting, but that segment represents less than a third of the running time. To get to the parts of the film that...

In all fairness, I think I might have enjoyed this film if I was nine years old. As a much older man, however, “enjoyment” is far from what I experienced while enduring the two-hour slog of Transformers: Rise of the Beasts. “Boredom” and �...

In 2014, Japanese director Hirokazu Kore-eda’s Like Father, Like Son missed the #1 spot on my annual Top 10 list by a whisker (it was one of three films that year to which I awarded four stars). A few years later, his Shoplifters topped the l...