Not your typical Robin Williams movie, One Hour Photo is an intense psychological thriller. Most of it takes place in a fictional big-box store called SavMart, which I first thought was supposed to be Target but eventually was clearly WalMart…. Read More ›
Movies & (occasionally) TV
Monopoly
Of course I played Monopoly a fair amount as a preteen, teen, and young adult. I even played it a bit as a not-so-young adult. The political implications were never in the front of my mind—except for the one summer… Read More ›
The Next Generation
The Next Generation. No, not Star Trek—we’re talking America’s Test Kitchen: The Next Generation on Amazon FreeVee. Normally I don’t like cooking competitions. But I continued to watch all ten episodes of this competition because of my love for the… Read More ›
It Happened One Night
Romcoms have never held much appeal for me, not even when they were made in 1934 and were called screwball comedies, and not even when they starred Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert. Nevertheless, I watched It Happened One Night, since… Read More ›
It’s Magpie Murders, not The Magpie Murders!
Yes, the definite article makes a difference…not because we’re being pedantic, but because we’re being attentive to anagrams and acrostics. Here’s the problem: I’m talking, of course, about the recent PBS Masterpiece series by Anthony Horowitz, titled Magpie Murders, as… Read More ›
Remember the…the what? Remember the Alamo? Remember the Maine? No, remember the Horn & Hardart Automat!
If you are from either the New York or the Philadelphia area—and if you are of a certain age—you will fondly remember the Horn & Hardart Automat. And now there is a wonderful documentary about it, simply titled The Automat,… Read More ›
Catch Me If You Can
Not the book, not the musical: I’m talking about the 2002 Steven Spielberg movie starring Leonardo DiCaprio along with Christopher Walken, Tom Hanks, Amy Adams, Martin Sheen, and others that I haven’t heard of but you have. As you probably… Read More ›
Revisiting Chinatown. (That’s Chinatown, not Chinatown.)
After nearly half a century, I finally decided to rewatch Chinatown, which I only dimly recalled. I remembered that it had been one of my favorite movies at the time. Would it hold up after so many decades? The answer… Read More ›
Lies, Politics, and Democracy
Knowing the facts is not the same thing as seeing them all put together in a single two-hour documentary. Yes, we all know the story of Trump’s attempted insurrection on January 6, 2021, and we may even know the surrounding… Read More ›
Bond. James Bond.
Apparently there are 27 James Bond movies (so far). I had seen only four of them—all before 1970, back in the Connery era—so I figured it was time to start watching again. I was wrong. But I’m getting ahead of… Read More ›