Anyone who thinks that cats do not have the same level of intelligence, cunning and malicious humor that people are capable of … well, I can only guess that you’ve never had a cat. Of course, that is a misnomer. People do not have cats as pets. Cats have people as executive assistants. My two, … Continue reading
Okay, question: What franchise started off with a movie that is an undisputed classic, was followed by a second and third that, while they didn’t equal the original, were still entertaining, a lame fourth chapter, and saw an actor reprising his signature role after roughly two decades? You may be thinking Indiana Jones, and you wouldn’t … Continue reading
Last time I watched “Batman Returns,” I tried an interesting experiment: I wanted to see how much screen time Michael Keaton actually had in the movie. I don’t have a stopwatch, but by watching the digital timer on my DVD player, I was still able to keep a pretty accurate tally. I came up with … Continue reading
Not sure how many of you have ever had the experience of driving on the wonderful roads we have here in Jersey (I guess that’s NEW Jersey as out-of-staters refer to it), but a few months ago, they dropped the speed limit on a 20-mile stretch of the Garden State Parkway from 65 to 55 … Continue reading
I’d guess that being a ghost is a strange experience, to say the least, and yet this weekend I think I got an idea of what it must be like. The occasion was the annual reunion weekend at my alma mater over in central New Jersey. So I decided to go; after all, I had … Continue reading
It’s maddening when even the greatest movies have at least one little plot detail that seems so mind-numbingly stupid that it makes what should have been a perfect 10 into a 9.5. I’m talking about the one Achilles heel of the original “Alien” — or perhaps I should say Achilles feline. Jones, the cat. Now, why pick … Continue reading
As movie fans, we all have our guilty pleasures. Films we know are utter crap, and yet we still love them, even if admitting it means we will be laughed at, or have our taste and judgment questioned. For me, that film is Disney’s 1979 fiasco, “The Black Hole.” Why I love this film so … Continue reading
It often seems like life is just too fast-paced for our own good anymore, and that everything has become a rat race. And it occurred to me that even the moviegoing experience has been tainted by this, to some extent. What got me started on this train of thought was looking in my local newspaper … Continue reading
Why do we need yet another remake of Frank Herbert’s Dune? I realize remakes are all the rage in today’s creatively bankrupt movie industry, but let’s stop and consider a few things. First, this is a novel that already has been filmed twice. Both versions, I think, have their merits — the strengths of one … Continue reading
George Lucas is a genius. He has managed to raise to the level of an art form the ability to package and repackage his movies with restored, added or enhanced features over and over, and we all keep on buying them and making him richer and richer. For years, he held off on putting the … Continue reading