10/5/07:  "The gloves are off.  While Hollywood was quick to start using the 9/11 terrorist attacks as a reason heartbroken love interests had lost their wives, the actual War on Terror had been conspicuously absent from the movies during its' first six years.  Oh, Hollywood had its' reasons:  a fear of encouraging hate crimes being the most noble, a fear of encouraging people to vote Republican a bit less noble, and a fear of alienating pro-war ticket buyers that was downright cowardly.  But now that the War in Iraq is as unpopular as it is entrenched, filmmakers will finally begin to emerge from their bunkers and weigh in, with a staggering number of war and terrorism-themed projects due just in time for the awards season.  First to emerge is Peter Berg's The Kingdom, a deliberately-paced, but ultimately fulfilling FBI-vs.-terrorists thriller with the novelty of being set in the country that produced more 9/11 hijackers than any other:  our good friend Saudi Arabia.

With the help of terrorists in Saudi police uniforms, a US housing complex in Riyadh is bombed, and follow-up attacks claim the life of one of the first agents (Kyle Chandler) on the scene.  Among his friends at the FBI is Special Agent Ronald Fleury (Jamie Foxx), who quickly assembles a team to travel there and investigate."  MORE

10/7/07:  "As a child of the 80's, “classic” arcade video games meant a lot to me growing up, and I still play them on my PS2 from time to time.  As we learn from the new documentary The King of Kong:  A Fistful of Quarters, they mean quite a bit more than that to some people.  There's something inside us all that burns to be The Best, to be Special, and years of study, skill and hard work have allowed the subjects of the film to record higher scores on the Donkey Kong video game (the one that introduced Mario to the world) than anyone else alive.  It doesn't matter that their scores “don't mean anything”:  they mean everything to them, and the movie focuses its' unblinking camera upon what these people and those around them are willing to do, and not do, to claim that record.  The King of Kong is superficially about Donkey Kong, but at its' heart it's an ethics lesson of the highest order.

In 1982, LIFE Magazine brought a group of the country's top video game players together for a photo shoot.  One clearly stood out:  with his unflinching self confidence and self-aggrandizing persona, Billy Mitchell was the closest thing the gaming community would ever have to a Star.  Years passed and new generations of games consigned Billy's scores on the likes of Donkey Kong and Missile Command to obscure trivia, but for a small group the passion for these games continued to burn."  MORE

3/22/09:  "I've said it before and I'll say it again, the two movies most responsible for modern Hollywood filmmaking are Pulp Fiction and The Sixth Sense.  While the later popularized twist endings to a previously unprecedented degree, it also opened the door for a subgenre I call The Question Movie, a story that presents a bizarre or inexplicable phenomenon and asks you to sit patiently for 90-140 minutes waiting for The Answer:  what exactly is going on here?  Question movies are fun to think about before you see them, and fun to play along with while they're unfolding but, truth be told, it's really hard to come up with an Answer that's actually gonna satisfy.  Give Knowing, the long, long-gestating screenplay (check out that writing credit, I might have done some uncredited work on this one and since forgotten about it!) that's finally been filmed by Dark City director Alex Proyas, this much:  the way it ends is certainly no cop-out.  But it also makes this a movie whose final 10 minutes are substantially different in tone, style and scope from the 110 that proceeded them, leaving me feeling a bit empty about the entire enterprise.  I admired the craft and conviction of Knowing, and can't say I had a bad time, but will probably disappoint all but a select few moviegoers who'll really admire its' audacity."  MORE

6/12/08:  "As moviegoers, we have a love/hate relationship with trailers.  They tease, they spoil, they lie through their teeth in the attempt to get us to buy a ticket.  Once in a while, you'll see a trailer, like the one for August Rush, that perfectly encapsulates the emotional experience of the movie you'll see without giving away every last one of its' beats.  On the other hand, the animated comedy Kung Fu Panda surprised me by being so free of surprises:  it's nothing short of a 90-minute remake of its' own trailer.  Anchored by some appealing vocal performances and lovely, colorful animation, Panda is never less than an agreeable movie experience.  It's just also never much more, a mild, predictable fable best enjoyed by kids and animation die-hards.

In the Valley of Peace, a panda named Po (voice of Jack Black) works at a drudgerous job in the noodle restaurant of his father, a goose named Mr. Ping (James Hong).  But Po dreams of martial arts glory like that known by the Furious Five:  Tigress (Angelina Jolie), Monkey (Jackie Chan), Mantis (Seth Rogan), Viper (Lucy Liu) and Crane (David Cross).  Those warriors are students of Master Shifu (Dustin Hoffman), himself a student of Master Oogway.  There is a prophecy that in a time of great danger, Oogway will select The Dragon Warrior, who will receive a special scroll with the key to ultimate power."  MORE