As Before Midnight draws near to its titular hour, Jesse (Ethan Hawke) gets a mid-argument chance to make a list of his beloved Celine’s (July Delpy) flaws. “Well, for starters, you’re fucking crazy,” he begins …

Star Trek into Darkness is a showcase for director J.J. Abrams at his most J.J. Abrams-y. Do you identify Abrams by his fondness for lens flares? You will not be disappointed. Lens Flare spends enough …

Anyone who’s seen the screamy, thudding trailers for Baz Luhrmann’s The Great Gatsby knows that it is not a paint-by-numbers cinematic re-presentation of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s elegant, economic novel. The numbers are there, of course: …

Iron Man 3 is, like its hero Tony Stark at the outset and Stark’s girlfriend Pepper Potts at another point in the story, a hot mess. It does what third installments tend to do: revisit …

"Why do we come back down?” asks Marina (Olga Kurylenko) in Terrence Malick’s To the Wonder. Why, after mounting to transcendence, do we sink back willy-nilly into everything we sought to transcend? To take an …

Television veteran Chadwick Boseman gives a fine, canny performance in 42 as Jackie Robinson, the man who broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers in 1947. Well, except for when he talks …

Lore is a loser’s history of World War II, a less fantastical, more moving post-apocalyptic wasteland film out of Australia than the one that starred Mel Gibson back in 1979. Less fantastical because it’s set …

The production notes for Oz the Great and Powerful came with a heads-up: “Please note that this movie stands alone and shouldn’t be compared to any other versions of the Oz films.” I’m fine with …

In the interest of objectivity, I suppose I should start out by saying that it’s difficult for me to be objective about John Dies at the End. It hits too many buttons for me to …

A shaggy dog story about a nearly hairless cat in 1920s Algiers. He serves his master the rabbi, but he loves his mistress, the rabbi’s fleshy daughter. When he eats the family parrot and so …

Judging by the dewy exhalation that sighed forth from at least half the audience in attendance at the prerelease screening, it may be that the opportunity to put sensitive, handsome Ryan Gosling in a suit …

It would be easy, and it is certainly tempting, to use a review of The Hobbit as the occasion for an all-out assault on High Frame Rate (HFR) digital cinema. HFR is, after all, the …

What a wasted opportunity. Somebody — presumably writers Oren Peli and Carey and Shane Van Dyke — had the fine idea of capitalizing on the current anxieties surrounding nuclear power in a post-Fukushima world (hello, …

I wish there were more films like I Wish: films that capture the wise foolishness and foolish wisdom of children without making them into miniature adults. Films that take seriously the efforts of children to …

I don’t know if it’s a good thing or a bad thing that I always ask, “Why animate?” when I run into an animated feature. But good or bad, I do it. Jean-Loup Felicioli and …

In his book Democracy in America, French sociologist Alexis de Tocqueville claimed that in our fair country, religion had a greater influence on women than it did on men. This was well and good, he …

It’s easy to imagine some Hollywood exec seeing certain scenes from Tarsem Singh’s The Fall and thinking, “Holy Tentpole, boys, here’s a director who has rediscovered the art of the breathtaking vista! And look what …

My first reaction to The Woman in Black was “all nerves, no heart.” But I have a weakness for the sort of nerve-stretching that the film employs. The sort that comes from a long shot …

“This is my Harley,” says Junior with pride. He hovers over the motorized kiddie motorcycle, which sits in the living room of Chris and Laura’s Santee home. Junior is five; his sister Lizzie is three. …

Scott: The first inkling that Christmas was not a holiday for Hebrews came from a neighbor kid, the fine Aryan specimen Timothy Murphy: “My Uncle Roy says Jews celebrate Christmas by staying home and counting …

In the early moments of Shame, we learn that sex addict Brandon Sullivan (Michael Fassbender) has a huge member, as if nature was instructing him in the way he ought to go and he was …

A slice-of-life indie about a young man facing cancer, overstuffed with Seth Rogen, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Up in the Air’s Anna Kendrick as the world’s worst beginning therapist, and Anjelica Huston. Rogen looms especially large as …

In 1991, director Joe Johnston brought us The Rocketeer, in which a decent All-American guy chances upon the means to become a superhero. This enables him to take on the Nazi menace and its plan …

The Hangover Part II At one point in The Hangover Part II , Zach Galifianakis puts a bottle beneath the robes of an elderly Buddhist monk as they ride together on a bus through the …

"But this really is Cailles en Sarcophage!” — General Lorens Lowenhielm, Babette’s Feast The general is shocked when he says this. He is shocked because he has just finished describing a dish he once enjoyed …

The Conspirator “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it,” said philosopher George Santayana. This saying has spawned many variants, including, now, director Robert Redford’s: “Those who cannot learn from history are …

The Adjustment Bureau For everyone who couldn’t get enough of the Matt Damon metaphysical muddle in Hereafter, here’s a second helping, the chief lesson of which seems to be: it’s hard out there for an …

“Is the baby outside?” asks my wife, alarm bubbling up through her groggy vowels. It’s summer, the middle of the night. We’re sleeping with the windows open, which is why we can hear the plaintive …

My last visit to Fallbrook Winery was in 2006; longtime restaurateur Ed Moore had invited me up to listen in on a blending session for the winery’s 2004 Merlot. But one blend led to another, …

Riding into town a day late and a dollar short, ready to review the big releases from last week. Howdy, folks. I’m staff writer Matthew Lickona. You may remember me from such Reader columns as …

Burlesque Christina (howl like it hurts) Aguilera plays Ali, short for Alice, a cute-as-pie Iowa waitress with aspirations of Sunset Strip stardom. By means of contrived necessity (that is to say, she walks by the …

How to build an old-fashioned neighborhood.

In 1998, Carlsbad native Adam Carruth was “kind of a life student — just [kept] going back to school.” He’d studied botany at UC Riverside, so for a change of pace, he headed north to …

Of course, he didn’t stay here. Most likely, you wouldn’t either, not if you were young and ambitious and living a two-hour drive up the freeway to get to Hollywood. Not if you’d grown up …

What’s in the sack? That’s all they care about.Is it a rock or a rolled-up giraffe?Is it pickles or nickels or busted bicycles?And if we guess it, will you give us half?Do they ask where …

Dennis Grimes spends the first half-hour of every day “tending to Twitter, being a cheerleader” for Ramona Valley wine. From September 6 of this year: “94F today, 47F low & 83F tomorrow Ramona Valley AVA …

“This is HIP-HOP. I don’t know what they told you, but this is called HIP-HOP!” DJ Artistic has me in a gentle headlock as he shouts this into my ear. He’s not being aggressive; he …

Ryan Baker was happy. Living by the beach in PB at the dawn of the millennium, working at Stone Brewing, and attending San Diego State. “I was, like, ‘Why would I go anywhere?’” he recalls. …

“People who can’t draw are stunned by those who can.” — Scott Peterson, editor at the La Jolla–based comic imprint WildStorm. When Peterson said that, it struck me as being a pretty good explanation for …

I grew up in a religion that loved everything I would be taught to disdain in graduate school: America, authority, marriage, motherhood, and divine revelation. My father was a history-reading intellectual who treated me like …

81 pounds of wood and steel Valentine’s Day, 2010: Strolling through the outer edges of downtown before heading home for the evening. Passing Salvatore’s Cucina Italiana at the corner of Front and G and glancing …

Back in November of 2009, I took note of a billboard ­I’d seen on the 8 West, put up by the San Diego Coalition of Reason. ­“Don’t believe in God?” it read. “You’re not alone.” …

That’s Matthew Richards of Matthew Richards Wines over there in the picture, and while it’s a decent enough head shot, it’s not really the right pic to accompany this piece. The right pic would be …

Much of the interior of Santa Sophia was straight out of the Jet Age — everything groovy, expansive, and clean. A pair of curved entrance tunnels led to a church whose high walls and ceiling …

It is not uncommon for critics of Christian moralism to note that the Bible is chock-full of deeply immoral behavior. And that was what made Sunday’s service at Cross Church so remarkable. There, in a …

“Relevant teachings by Pastor Ed Turley,” advertised the Cornerstone Church website. “If you can’t use it on Monday, he won’t say it on Sunday!” The banners hanging on the walls at the church on Sunday …

I arrived early for the 10:40 a.m. contemporary service at Lakeside Christian Church; Bible study was just finishing up its session in the dim adobe (!) church. (The two arched alcoves in the sanctuary were …

1. Beginnings When Miles the wannabe novelist sets out for his winey holiday in Sideways — the film that did for California Pinot Noir what E.T. did for Reese’s Pieces (kids, ask your parents) — …

Boys dressed in suits and ties greeted me at the door to the Lamar Kingdom Hall on the evening of March 30. Inside were more boys in suits and ties and girls in dresses, all …

It was perhaps odd to see people dressed in their Sunday finery sitting on folding chairs in the pale gray utilitarian confines of a fellowship hall. But I learned quickly that the oddness would not …