A new essay from your resident contrarian.

David Lynch. Artist. David Lynch was an artist from Missoula, Montana. He wrote and directed the films Inland Empire ,  Mulholland Drive...

There are a myriad number of stories of great writers being burned by Hollywood. At the beginning of the sound age, dramatists of note...

*** out of **** On a talk show in the mid-‘70s, Orson Welles was asked who was the finest American filmmaker of that moment. His...

I must admit I’m late having an interest in the work of Alfred Hitchcock. Perhaps the most famous (along with Chaplin) of all British...

Greetings, readers! I hope you all had a nice holiday season and are as ready for the New Year as I am. 2024 was both challenging and...

I am significantly less proud of this list —not because it's not a good list or basically a reflection of my opinion, but just because...

I had already planned for this year's penultimate blog piece to cover the best 100 films of 2010-2019, so I thought I would offer my list...

I have occasionally made comments on this blog that America has become a sick nation in its ravenous appetite for true crime. It is...

The cold is finally here. Jackets and layers. The quickening of the dark. The sense that something special is drawing near. Christmas has...

This last Sunday, I attended the Cahaba Theatre Group’s staged reading of Neil Simon’s Jake’s Women . As there was only one performance,...

** ½ out of **** The mid-1970s to early-1980s were an interesting time in movie history for a variety of reasons. On the one hand, the...

Growing up as an actor, I always believed actors were born, not made. Certainly, one can learn techniques of speaking and movement,...

Not all holidays are created equally, but there is a ubiquity about them. It is necessary, for example, to have a bright spot in the...

* ½ out of **** At this point, what on earth can you say about Ryan Murphy? His output includes some of the worst television I’ve ever...

Note: This is not meant to be a criticism of the entirety of the Me Too movement, but one story of those who exploited it for...

Early on, I was a poor learner. I really was. The sort who liked to have books around me but couldn’t get through them. It wasn’t the...

A version of this list appears in my collection Everyone Else is Wrong (And You Know It): Criticism/Humor/Non-Fiction . Click the link to...

***1/2 out of **** It was completely by accident that I saw  It Ends with Us . In a confusing back-and-forth with my fellow moviegoer, I...

A version of this list appears in my collection Everyone Else is Wrong (And You Know It): Criticism/Humor/Non-Fiction . Click the link to...