For the longest time, I was ambivalent about the Watchmen movie. While I'd read the book and geeked out when I saw the trailer in front of The Dark Knight, any excitement I felt was tempered by that one nagging doubt looming in the back of my mind: What if it sucks? As a result, I tended to avoid any news or LJ posts about the movie, scrolling by ( Read more... )

If you'd told me back in January that Cinderella Man would end up as a movie pick du jour, I'd have called you a liar. Back then, the trailer seemed to be in front of every movie I saw playing--and each time, I'd be rolling my eyes so far back that they'd come back forth the other way. From all indications, the movie looked like it was going to be ( Read more... )

Back when I worked at the theatre, we had a rule of thumb: Walkouts meant that a movie was good, or at least doing something right. It meant that a movie had been so offensive, so challenging, or even so different as to cause people to leave their seats and demand refunds. And offensive, challenging, and different were what we were there to see. If ( Read more... )

In his 2003 book Fat Land: How Americans Became the Fattest People in the World, author Greg Critser revealed that the Grandpappy of supersizing was the movie theatre industry. It all started when theatre owner David Wallerstein noticed that few patrons wanted to buy two boxes of popcorn, even if their one box offered no satiety. His solution? ( Read more... )

Welcome to a new feature where I irregularly pick a movie and advise you to go see it. The difference here is that I don't ramble on like I do in my reviews. Dig?

When I first saw this week's pick, the Delicate Art of Parking, I was a little disappointed. I was looking forward to the movie promised me by the trailer, which looked like it was a day ( Read more... )