I can remember the exact moment my enduring love of James Bond was born: It was my freshman year, and a nasty case of strep throat laid me out for an entire week. Thankfully, it was the very same week that TBS aired their annual 007 marathon. That means every waking minute of my convalescence…
Superhero movies now occupy such valuable real estate on the topography of cinema history, it's hard to believe that an adaptation of Superman could ever have been an enormous risk. Sure, the character was already a cultural icon, even by 1978. At the same time, comic book characters had long dwelled in the…
Let me start this review with the sting of brutal truth: Just about any movie that has anything to do with video games makes me want to bash myself in the head with a 7 iron. For every entry that distinguishes itself as tolerable (Ready Player One, for instance), there are ten, twelve--no,…
If an 8 ball of cocaine suddenly burst to life as any movie, it would be Con Air. Dense, sweaty, and startlingly eccentric, this is a unique cinematic experience that somehow elevates ferocious stupidity into an undeniable art form: It's like Picasso meticulously painting a scene from Baywatch, or a gorgeous arrangement of…
Candyman provokes an intriguing question: Is a gory slasher flick the appropriate vessel for important socio-cultural commentary? I grappled with the answer for much of the movie's runtime, tumbling its message over and over in my brain. And then it hit me: Racial tensions are still boiling in this country. …
Last night, I listened to snippets of a new album by a French pianist named Colette Maze. The tracks were elegiac and meticulously constructed. You ready for the crazy part? Maze is 107 years old. She can recall both World Wars. I thought about her as I watched Cry Macho.…
What a remarkable act of bravery it was, to unleash this movie onto an unsuspecting world. Buckaroo Banzai represents a big-budget experiment, a test to see if the Reagan Era was ready for something so unabashedly kooky, so willfully geeky. The filmmakers even double down by attaching an end title that promises more…
In addition to--and perhaps because of--its savage death toll and economic devastation, COVID-19 also provoked an axis-shifting temblor of mass introspection. You could call it the Great Reassessment: The stillness of a pandemic lockdown quickly forced millions and billions to take a long, hard look at their jobs, friendships, and marriages and sort…
But, at the same time, it’s almost impossible to avoid the emotional pull of so much good music, or get lost within the splendor of Jennifer Hudson’s jaw-dropping performance. It may not be perfect, but Respect will sock to you, just the same.
Plenty of movies have done this kind of thing better, I’ve can’t think of them right now. The combination of booze and bad movies makes Toddy a dull boy.