image courtesy of IMDb.com The best movie twists are not detrimental to the success of the film. But if a movie depends on one that completely dismantles the entire structure of the film, it better be a master stroke and not, say, the entire series is going on inside an autistic child’s head (props to any reader who understands the reference). I knew the twist going into this one, which didn’t help. But, man oh man. Spoilers ahead. Baker Dill (Matthew McConaughey) a fisherman

Image courtesy of rottentomatoes.com I love Ocean’s Eleven. Probably more than I should. Ocean’s Twelve didn’t do much for me, though I’ve only watched it once. And I still haven’t gotten around to Thirteen — I think I felt too burned by Twelve to bother. That’s a franchise with some steep diminishing returns, which is the mindset I brought into Ocean’s 8. The setup is classic Ocean’s, just recast: Debbie Ocean (Sandra Bullock), fresh out of prison, links up with Lou and asse

Image courtesy of commonsensemedia.org I was in a coma for a couple weeks when I was twenty, after a car accident. My favorite musician did not visit me. But as far as I know, every friend who did visit fell in love during their hospital visits. All of them. Without fail. Because they bonded over shared pain and a mutual love of music. Not sure many PhDs came by, though. At least two that I know of - not in anthropology. Franny (Anne Hathaway) is doing fieldwork in Morocco wh

image courtesy of bbc.co.uk I watched the first few seasons of Downton Abbey before I lost interest. My wife and I are fans of The Gilded Age, Julian Fellowes’ “American Downton,” partly because it’s filmed in part in the Stockade section of Schenectady, New York, where I work. And while this film doesn’t dive into the upstairs-downstairs themes of that era of manners, it isn’t lost on this viewer how much Jane Austen’s novels have inspired those types of movies and shows. Ja

Image courtesy of mubi.com In 1999, NBC aired a television adaptation of Lewis Carroll’s Alice in Wonderland, starring a host of celebrities, like Whoopi Goldberg, Gene Wilder, Christopher Lloyd, and Tina Majorino, the girl who played Deb in Napoleon Dynamite. It won some Emmys and was heralded as a great technical achievement. In my memory, it was very cheesy and, despite using the best CGI available, it looked ridiculous. It couldn’t escape the “network TV movie” quality th