You usually hear the phrase “critic’s choice” referring to something that a critic is recommending.

But I confronted a real critic’s choice recently, one that more accurately reflects the odd dichotomy of this job.

It was a recent weekday morning and I had to choose between two screenings, both happening at the same time, both having what I thought was their final showing before they opened. (More…)

I never saw Elvis live – but I saw him dead.

In the summer of 1977, after the King ingested that last deep-fried peanut-butter-and-banana sandwich, I was among the first to see Elvis in his coffin in Graceland. I was reminded of that this week, when the 33rd anniversary of his death rolled around, by my then-girlfriend Anne Hurley, who accompanied me on the journey. (More…)

Another appointment demanded that I leave the screening of “Eat Pray Love” before it was over, about 100 minutes into the film, just around the time that Julia Roberts, as wandering writer/spiritual seeker Liz Gilbert, had landed in picturesque Bali, in search of herself.

There, no doubt, she spent the next 40 minutes learning to forgive herself for choosing the wrong men. In that way, she would now be able to learn how to get involved with Javier Bardem, under tropical and sunset-lit Bali skies – and eat and pray that he’s the one to love.

I saw about as much of “Eat Pray Love”’s 140-minute running time as there is to the entire length of Ruba Nadda’s “Cairo Time,” just now expanding on the arthouse circuit (and VOD). The two films have similarities that can’t be overlooked – but I’ll take the quiet, beguiling “Cairo Time” over the picturesquely feel-good “Eat Pray Love,” thanks. (More…)

Everything you need to know about what’s wrong with the movie industry can be found on the cover of the issue of Entertainment Weekly that’s currently on the stands.

It’s less the appearance of Ryan Reynolds as Green Lantern (hot diggity, another comic-book movie – can’t wait) than the fact that EW has, essentially, given over the entire issue to Comic-Con, which is this coming weekend in San Diego and whose ripples will be felt for the entire year to come.

I’m not quite sure how we reached a point where Comic-Con became the engine that drives Hollywood but that is absolutely the case. (More…)

I dreamed the other night that I was the only one who could stop a plot that involved someone wanting to take over the world by unleashing an army of the dead.

Oh wait, no – that’s the Tea Party movement.

To be truthful, I just saw that whole “army of the dead” in a movie. Well, actually, a couple of movies. If you want a demonstration of the studios’ imagination deficit problem, just screen-hop at your local multiplex. (More…)

If the movie year had ended last week, instead of just the first six months of the year, what movies would be the big contenders for awards?

It has, after all, been a fairly dreadful year for movies – or at least for studio movies. Indeed, this year seems to complete this part of the cycle in  which the studios give up all pretense of making serious films. For the foreseeable future, studio movies exist solely to churn audiences and popcorn through the multiplexes – with week after week of movies like “Leap Year,” “Jonah Hex” and “The Last Airbender.”

But look beneath the surface – in the arthouse theaters and the video-on-demand channels – and you’ll find the films that might just fill out the best-picture category when we get to the end of December. Even then, that particular top-10 - the best-picture category - looks to be pretty slim.

As I put this group together, I sorted out and set aside a handful of titles: “A Prophet,” “Ajami” and “The Secret in Their Eyes,” which may end up on lists but which were all foreign-language film Oscar nominees for 2009. On the other hand, I’m including two trilogies of films that actually first appeared as TV miniseries in other countries.

And if it seems too early, remember: By this time last year, “The Hurt Locker” and “Up” both had already been released. 

So here’s a quick rundown of the 10 best movies of 2010 – so far. (More…)

Who gets to be a critic?

These days, just about anybody with a working computer, it seems. Or, in the case of Cody Gifford, anyone whose mom has her own TV show. (More…)

We’ve already had this discussion – that everything is political, even in the most mundane and inane of movies.

Still, what’s always amazing to me is how hard some people work at reading political meaning into works that had no such ideas in mind. Just because you can make a case for a metaphorical reading of a movie doesn’t mean that you should. (More…)

Perhaps Hollywood is taking its cue from Diesel Jeans’ reprehensible advertising campaign, which advises people to “Be Stupid.”

How else to explain the blight that constitutes the current crop of summer movies? It’s not just that summer has become the silly season – it’s become the stupid season. And everyone seems willing to define quality downward, rather than say, “Hey, what the hell?”

Look at the frenzy over the casting announcement of Megan Fox’s replacement in “Transformers 3” – as if it mattered whether Fox is replaced by a model, a mannequin or an ottoman. (More…)

Critics are supposed to go into each movie with an open mind. No matter what we think of a particular director or actor or producer – and we all have our favorites and our most-hated in each category – we are expected to bring a blank slate to each new film.

And it’s tough. Frankly, it’s impossible.

Even when you have no particular opinion about the artists involved – or know nothing about them – the media culture in which we live makes it difficult not to be exposed to TV commercials, on-line trailers, magazine and newspaper features and the like, which create images and expectations of their own.

Even when I do my best to filter all of that out, it is impossible to do so. And so, though I weigh each movie on its own merits, I can’t help but have certain expectations going in.

Which brings me to a category of movie I think of as the not-terrible movie. (More…)