Step Up 2 The Streets

I'm a fall risk. My surgeon says I'm past that phase. I think he's both right and wrong. I live in fear of crashing to the ground. I'm a large man with two recently installed (Nov 2023/July 2024) hips. They work

Trying to catch your heart is like trying to catch your heart is like trying to catch your---

My internet life occasionally involves walking into a silly maze of pop culture associations for no good reason. Yesterday on Bluesky my pal April posted about a song she liked from her childhood in 1989. I thought, "I, too, like this song." Then I went to listen to

Eat your own coffin

Quick one today. I'm home from Atlanta, where one of our nieces got married to a good dude. I nearly had a hip disaster on the dance floor at the reception. More on that later. Today I need to tell you how to do something for Halloween. I

Notes on Radu Jude’s recent films, many of which have exceptionally long titles and zero patience with all you assholes

Romanian filmmaking doesn’t make deep inroads into the United States. Cristian Mungiu’s deadly serious and award-winning 2007 drama 4 Months, 3 Weeks and 2 Days is probably the most well-known of all the Romanian imports that have shown up in American arthouses over the past few decades. Radu

ARCHIVE: the new look

[NOTE: All archive reviews were published previously in print or on the internet for outlets that used to employ me. Every so often I'll be posting them here to give them another go.] HELLRAISER (2022) Pity the poor monsters of legendary horror movie franchises: Time and familiarity and

iPod track #4000-something

I still have an iPod. The last time it was updated was, I’m guessing, 2010 or so, not long before Apple purged my iTunes without any warning. One day I had 29,000+ songs in my files. The next day about 60% of that. Music I had purchased online,

Televisionary

La Pochette brand cigarette pouch, made from 100% leatherette and 14K Goldelle, tagline: “You kids KNOCK IT OFF!” This is an ad from Programme 4, a world outside of both time and place. The product, La Pochette, never existed. Also, in 1972, my mom owned one. She smoked Tareytons. She

An incomplete history of me being somewhat grouchy at a handful of movie premieres

I wrote a silly little book once – out of print, who cares – and in that silly little book I documented a moment when I was expected to review a film based on seeing it at its premiere. Sometimes they do this to you: no press screening, it's just

I love Los Angeles: Barrie Chase: 10/20/25

"Barrie Chase is here," I said to friend and neighbor Gary Cotti. The name didn't immediately click for him. So I whispered, "Mutual, I'm sure." "WHAT?! WHERE?!" He didn't yell, but his response was emphatic and warrants all-caps.

NEW/OLD: Under the Sun of Satan

Two novels about unhappy priests by Georges Bernanos: The Diary of a Country Priest (1936), about a young priest in a rural French village whose physical frailty from encroaching stomach cancer parallels the diminished faith of his parishioners. He can't pray or sleep or eat, and despairs over

a straight-up advertisement for my husband's book

I have built a subjective scale of Christmas mania and appointed myself as arbiter of truth. A simple 1 to 10, where 1 is you tolerate the holiday, 5 is you like it like a normal person, 10 is you might have actually lost your mind for it. I have

Look at this gorgeous tomato I just ate

I took that photo with my shitty iPhone 8. People laugh at me when I tell them that's still my level of phone but I don't care. It functions mostly. Anyway, the tomato. It's from my local farmer's market. Not THE farmer&

ARCHIVE: leave it all behind

INHERENT VICE (2014) A title card in Inherent Vice references graffiti from a Paris wall in May of 1968, when French student and worker protests announced a social revolution there. That slogan — “Under the pavingstones, the beach!” — is about two forces pushing against one another, the cement on top eventually

"The flower's insatiable passion turns its life into a circus of debauchery."

7 Walks with Mark Brown is a documentary about French plants and the paleobotanist who loves them, and when I describe it that simply to friends, sometimes their eyes glaze over and they say something deadly like, “Oh… well, I guess that sounds nice.” 7 Walks is, of course, more

ARCHIVE: sucks, dude

I woke up to a text from a friend letting me know that Radu Jude's latest film, Dracula, opens at the end of October. I admire Jude's films – his exuberantly long titles alone make me pretty happy: Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn; I Do Not

This photo of off-brand Dr. Pepper sodas...

has nothing directly to do with what I'm writing about today. I just really enjoy Dr. Pepper and I couldn't find a decent picture to represent anything else.* I don’t often watch the Emmy Awards. I never know when they’re taking place. And because

Get old with music

There’s a terrible Google commercial featuring 26-year-old “Ted” asking Google AI to find him, very specifically, a “cool” music activity in his city that still gets him home at a reasonable hour. This Ted person is allegedly 26 years old. And cares about being home at a reasonable hour.

Noël Coward for beginners

Fragments to follow. “Downton Abbey: The Grand Finale.” It’s fine. I hope it’s the last one. As work vehicles for Hugh Bonneville go, it's almost as suitably cozy as the Paddington movies, and there are now three of both. If we're to vote on

Untitled (2025)

The picture above was taken in July at the Los Angeles gallery CLEARING.* The artist's name is Henry Curchod and his immensely pleasurable show really knocked me out. Click on his name to see more. For now, we talk about galleries and how to enjoy them with me.

NEW/OLD: Our Beloved Month of August

August is over. Time to watch a movie about it. Earlier this year, Alonso and I saw and reviewed “Grand Tour,” the latest film from Portuguese writer-director Miguel Gomes. Both of us loved it, so I went hunting for earlier films from Gomes that I hadn’t yet seen.  “Our

The past, annotated

Not long ago, someone posted this video to YouTube from a VHS recording. It’s 61 minutes long, from a Mudhoney show that I attended, May 12, 1989 at the University of London's School of Oriental and African Studies. It’s a fairly notorious show. The press – specifically

ARCHIVE: the real real

HEAVEN IS FOR REAL (2014) When Colton Burpo (played here by cherubic newcomer Connor Corum) was four years old, his appendix ruptured and he nearly died. On the operating table he experienced what he describes as Heaven. Not only did he go there, he met his great grandfather, as well

It's not about a robot

Quick one today. Go watch one of my favorite films of 2025, Jia Zhangke's "Caught By the Tides." Assembled from two decades of footage (alternate takes, scenes from earlier films, and b-roll) from his earlier films, it's a beautiful, not-fully-linear story of two people

"The Damned" is a very quiet war movie

Roberto Minervini knows it’s bad here, and how we got here, and he’s not even from here. An Italian writer-director who’s lived in the United States for quite some time, much of it spent working in Texas, he makes films that defies easy categorization, including early features