A recent question on Jeopardy reminded me 1939 was a banner year for the release of the greatest number of quality films ever in a single year. Most were the product of the studio system. I will briefly discuss some of my favorites, starting with my favorite film genre, the Western. Jesse James ( “He […]

Travel well indeed. Guy Ritchie needed a win. After the success of his two Sherlock Holmes films in 2009 and 2011, people largely ignored the very good The Man from U.N.C.L.E. (2015), King Arthur: Legend of the Sword (2017) was an unmitigated disaster, and the Aladdin remake (2019) was a pile of shit that was […]

A tale of two movies. Sitting next to each other, in the same theater on the same night, my wife and I saw two entirely different movies. I saw a heartwarming movie with adorable, courageous kids, a solid story, and a tight running time that kept the film from meandering. My wife saw a jumbled, […]

So this is what death throes look like. When I was a sophomore in high school, I was a little too talkative one day during math class. My teacher told me stay after the bell rung, and, once everyone else had left the room, told me I could not leave until I acted like a […]

Do you smell something? It seems almost unfair to write about Dolittle. Why on Earth would a movie with a $175 million budget and starring Robert Downey Jr. be opening in the armpit of the Hollywood calendar known as January? All the kids are back in school, almost everyone blew all of their spending money […]

The French born Chemist E. I. du Pont arrived in the United States on January 1st 1800, a symbolic date for several reasons. (Aaron Burr came within a hair’s breadth of becoming president in the election of that year). In 1802 he established a factory in Wilmington Delaware to manufacture gun powder, using the improved formula of […]