I have this uncanny knack of being able to pick the Oscar-winning Best Film each year. My friends hate me for this, but when I’ve seen that year’s Best Picture winner, I know it. It’s been going on for more than ten years, and not once was I wrong. The moment I walked out of the screening of “Dances with Wolves,” I turned to my friends and said they’ve just seen the Best Picture of 1990. Read the rest of this entry »

Cursed pirates, a salty hero, a feisty damsel in distress, her handsome rescuer, sea battles, exciting sword duels, breathtaking scenery, what more could you want from a swashbuckling adventure? You get all of that and more in “Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl,” a rollicking E-Ticket cinema ride that, along with “Finding Nemo,” is one of the best films of the summer to date. Read the rest of this entry »

Filled with great conceit and whimsy, director E. Elias Merhige’s “Shadow of the Vampire” is the perfect marriage of fact and fantasy. Genuinely creepy, “Shadow of the Vampire” is scarier than anything else out there. Read the rest of this entry »

To some degree, we’ve all had people like Harry in our lives. They hover around the peripheral of our lives, barely noticeable. They always seem to know much more about us than we do them, and when we innocently invite them into our lives, they not only grab the chance, they eventually begin to take over. You try to be nice, but their obsessive behavior denies you the opportunity. Read the rest of this entry »

There are three things that Bobby Boucher loves more than anything else in the world: His Momma, Football and Water. All three are connected in Boucher’s limited world, where he serves as the water boy for the Louisiana University football team. Bobby would love to play football, but he loves his Momma, and his momma doesn’t want him playing no football. Read the rest of this entry »

They are the type of headlines that instantly grab your attention. You read them with morbid curiosity. Train derails, no survivors. Plane crashes on take-off. No survivors. Bus plunges off icy road. No survivors.

Then there’s that one headline. Subway crash kills 77, leaves one survivor. Man walks away from fatal plane crash. Read the rest of this entry »

While watching the latest estrogen thriller “Enough,” I thought about a girl I knew in high school. She was dating an abusive guy who had no problem reminding her that she belonged to him. When she tried to break up with him, he attempted to run over her. Restraining orders were useless. This guy was truly frightening. Read the rest of this entry »

A mystical tale of a spiritual journey shot in New Zealand tops my list of best films for 2003, but it’s not the film you think. Yes, the third and final chapter of director Peter Jackson’s "Lord of the Rings" trilogy made the list, but there was one film, released early last summer, that I just couldn’t shake. Read the rest of this entry »

Believe it or not, “The Poseidon Adventure” was the movie that cemented my desire to become a film critic. When I attended Hueneme High School, they offered an elective class called Film Criticism. Due to its popularity, it was only available to juniors and seniors. Read the rest of this entry »

Ennis Del Mar and Jack Twist arrived at the trailer of Wyoming rancher Joe Aguirre with hope of work for the summer. Not anxious to lose any sheep to predators, Aguirre hires the nineteen-year-olds to watch over the flock on Brokeback Mountain. While Ennis stays behind at the base camp, Jack travels up the mountain to sleep with the sheep. It’s a tedious, lonely existence made worse by the frigid cold and torrential downpours. Read the rest of this entry »