I love movies, tech, politics, games and more. I've been writing professionally since 1985 and, thankfully, have worked with some of the best editors in the business. I'm also a proud member of the Philadelphia Film Critics Circle and the Broadcast Film Critics Association (Critics Choice Awards).
An avalanche at a French ski resort threatens to bury a family’s future in Force Majeure. Would you take a bullet for your spouse? Would you hang precariously from a ledge in an attempt to pull your child to safety? Would you stay behind in a fire to make sure that everyone else gets out […]
A rudderless young woman decides to disappear from her own reality in hopes of finding her true calling in Laggies. 10 years after high school, Megan (Keira Knightley) still hasn’t found a way to move on with her life. All of her friends have long since moved on with theirs — getting married, having kids, starting a […]
A brainy young teen, his robot companion and a group of misfit friends form an unlikely clan of crime fighters in the animated adventure Big Hero 6. Hiro Hamada (voiced by Ryan Potter) is a natural whiz at robotics engineering. That’s quite an accomplishment for an otherwise typical 14-year-old boy. He uses his skills to craft […]
After their son is killed in action, his recovering parents welcome one of his team into their home in The Guest. The Peterson family is enduring a tragedy that few of us can begin to truly comprehend and none of us want to experience. Caleb Peterson was killed during a combat mission in Afghanistan. His parents, Laura […]
The curious case of a master forger and the complicated effort to end his deception is the focus of the documentary Art and Craft. For decades, an incredibly talented forger named Mark Landis managed to fool the very best curators at top museums all around the United States, and no one seemed to care. Sporting a frail […]
A once famous, now nearly forgotten, actor struggles to produce a new Broadway show in Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance). Back in the ’80s, Riggan Thomson (Michael Keaton) won the coveted role of iconic superhero Birdman and with it the commensurate fame and fortune of a superstar. Within a few short years, the role also […]
A gifted young jazz drummer enrolls in a prestigious jazz school where perfection is the only acceptable goal in Whiplash. Renowned drummer Buddy Rich was a frequent guest on The Tonight Show Starring Johnny Carson. Even though I knew nothing about him outside the show, I would always make a point of tuning in whenever he was […]
A war-weary tank crew takes on desperate Nazi soldiers in the final months of World War II in Fury. George C. Scott played the indomitable and eccentric General George S. Patton in the 1970 film Patton and said, “No bastard ever won a war by dying for his country. He won it by making the other poor dumb […]
A surly, aging curmudgeon becomes an unexpected role model for his sympathetic young neighbor in St. Vincent. Henry Wadsworth Longfellow once wrote, “Into each life some rain must fall.” Vincent McKenna (Bill Murray) would abrasively dismiss such talk as the ramblings of a sorely misguided optimist. The warming rays of sunlight that others claim to find in […]
A determined reporter for a small-time paper uncovers a shocking government conspiracy that threatens his very existence in Kill the Messenger. While investigating the curious case of a major drug dealer who’s seemingly impervious to prosecution, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Gary Webb (Jeremy Renner) discovers a CIA connection that leads him ever deeper down a dark, disturbing rabbit hole. […]
High school students and their parents struggle with the changes that result from new technologies and the Internet in Men, Women & Children. Every generation faces a new set of challenges. Today, one of those challenges is in how the Internet and all that’s come as a result of it have forever changed the lives […]
A successful big-city defense attorney returns home to help his embattled father in The Judge. Hank Palmer (Robert Downey Jr.) is the kind of defense attorney whom every guilty defendant hopes that he can afford. He knows every nook and cranny of the law and loses no sleep over bending it to his client’s will at every possible […]