Director Dome Karukoski’s portrait of the man who wrote The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings tells three intertwining tales. The first and most artful of these gives us the making of a writer: …

When Jeff Holland’s aunt committed suicide around a year ago, it came as a shock. “She lived in Kansas City,” he recalls over coffee at the Leucadia Pannikin, “and she had been the primary caretaker …

As I write this, Avengers: Endgame has passed $2 billion at the global box office. People do like superheroes. San Diego-based clinical psychologist Janina Scarlet is no exception. Radiation exposure at the Chernobyl disaster left …

For his third outing as a director, Ralph Fiennes gives the title, star billing, and great majority of screen time to Oleg Ivenko in his turn as famed Russian ballet dancer Rudolf Nureyev, who also …

She: “This is you in your element. I love it.” He: “I’ll show you another car I could have bought for $500,000...” The owner of a local Mercedes garage is showing a 1965 Pontiac GTO. …

Craig Hopkins of Dallas, Texas has a collection of model cars in a cabinet, organized “by how much I like them. This car is on the top row.” “This car” is his restored and very …

Medical explanation of Christ's crucifixion and other Easter stories The severe scourging, with its intense pain and appreciable blood loss, most probably left Jesus in a preshock state. Moreover, hematidrosis had rendered his skin particularly …

One of the real pleasures of feeling lousy enough to stay home in bed is the YouTube deep dive. Flu’d up a couple years ago, I watched maybe 15 straight hours’ worth of stuff about …

Hello, lamppost, whatcha knowin’? You remember the line, right? Simon & Garfunkel, “59th Street Bridge Song,” feelin’ groovy? They were big with the anti-war set a couple of generations ago. But it’s only today that …

“I worked as a consultant for the 1989 presidential election in Chile, the first since the CIA-assisted coup in 1973,” recalled Michael Munger. “I remember thinking, ‘I hope I never live in a country where …

Comic-Con International’s WonderCon will be throwing open its doors on March 29 up in Anaheim, but the pop-culture juggernaut has something else in the offing — much smaller, but also much closer to home. This …

I was bored watching Captain Marvel. For a while, I thought it was because this particular Marvel movie wasn’t meant for me. The spiritually inclined had already had their outing with Dr. Strange, the same …

The emergency room teaches you some things and reminds you of others. It teaches you that what looks like an emergency to you — my daughter is weeping from the pain and it’s not letting …

Abe DeLeon delivered the San Diego Reader from 1986 until January of this year. At one point or another, he handled almost every route the paper offered: from Oceanside to Imperial Beach, and as far …

Director Florian Henckel von Donnersmarck’s ambitious three-hour pre- and post-WWII epic has the rare and curious distinction of opening with a villain-speech that’s actually supposed to inform your experience of the film: a Nazi docent’s …

Maybe it’s unfair to open my review of The LEGO Movie 2: The Second Part by noting that midway through, my 10-year-old daughter felt compelled to lean over and whisper in my ear, “I don’t …

Like more than a few members of my generation, I had Orson Welles’ cinematic masterpiece Citizen Kane “spoiled” for me by Charles Schulz’s Peanuts comic strip. (A sign that I’m getting old: I feel the …

It’s a little after 7 pm on January 2nd, and the San Diego Chess Club is holding the club champtionship qualifying round in its mid-century Balboa Park digs along Sixth Avenue just north of Ivy. …

I missed the first half of Mass on Christmas Eve because I’m an usher down at Our Lady of the Rosary. That means I wind up dealing with the busyness at the back of the …

“I didn’t know people still played bridge.” “I guess you could say it’s extremely vulgar. I like it a lot.” — Exchange from Whit Stillman’s excellent movie Metropolitan, which came out in 1990, 17 years …

A strange year at the movies for your exceedingly humble correspondent. Only about 100 reviews this time ‘round, and three of my notable ten didn’t even make it into the paper. The first of those …

At the outset of The Favourite, director Yorgos Lanthimos’ scabrous and nihilistic romp amid the English royals, Emma Stone — playing Abigail, a clever girl from a fallen family — faces an unpleasant choice: either …

Back in 2011, a real-estate man named Tony Wells caught the attention of the LA Weekly with El Bordello Alexandra, a Venice Beach apartment complex that he’d spent ten years transforming, along with his partner …

“If I had known the walk was what the walk was, I would have stayed in the car,” says the man at the beach where the United States ends and Mexico begins. And it was …

“The man is dead,” texted my brother on November 12. “Which man?” I answered. “The Man.” The capital “M” got my attention. “God?” “Yes. Blasphemy, but not by much. He was the Creator. Stan Lee.” …

November seems odd/ You’re my firing squad/ November — Tom Waits, “November” My wife might say that anyone who goes listening to Tom Waits’ “November” in November — when the darkness starts closing in even …

Ralph Breaks the Internet, Disney’s sequel to Wreck-It Ralph, is superior to its predecessor in several ways. Character Designer Jeff Merghart, a La Mesa native who attended Helix High and Grossmont College before heading to …

November 8 is Genetic Counselor Awareness Day. National Society of Genetic Counselors president Erica Ramos lives and works here in San Diego, and wants you to know that “your genes and your predispositions to disease …

On November 2, the Catholic Church celebrated the Feast of All Souls, commemorating the faithful departed who have died but who have yet to attain beatitude in heaven. The feast reminds the living to pray …

Inkwell Tattoo & Body Piercing on Main Street in Ramona is not on any of San Diego’s haunted house tours, and perhaps it’s just as well. Owner-operator Christopher Fowles has a business to run, and …

In 1996, physics professor Alan Sokal submitted an article to the cultural studies journal Social Text claiming that “it is becoming increasingly apparent that physical ‘reality’ is fundamentally ‘a social and linguistic construct.’” His aim …

In 2012, writer-director Drew Goddard took a bunch of teens to a Cabin in the Woods for a rollicking nightmare subversion of the horror genre. Here, he takes a bunch of strangers — Jeff Bridges’ …

“Julian had a polite but implacable contempt for Judeo-Christian tradition in virtually all its forms. He would deny this if confronted, citing evasively his affection for Dante and Giotto, but anything overtly religious filled him …

“A few years ago,” said KPBS general manager Tom Karlo to the 25 or so people gathered in the plush quiet of the Joan & Irwin Jacobs Theater at the San Diego Museum of Photographic …

Three three-star new movie releases this week, including Golden Job and I Am Not a Witch

I Am Not a Witch: craft and care

His and Hers memory quilts

This seems to be shaping up as the Year of the Dog in cinema, what with Alpha, AXL, Dog Days, and now the delightful documentary Pick of the Litter. After that, you may end up …

Dingle detour

Kenny Bania buys a slice

A long time ago, a friend gave me a copy of Gerald Brittle's The Demonologist: The Extraordinary Career of Ed and Lorraine Warren, and warned me not to read it before going to sleep. I …

September doesn't start until tomorrow, and Fall's not for another three weeks, but Scott Marks has shaken off the torpor brought on by a slew of summer snoozefests and lept back into the fray like …

The Little Stranger: Gleeson’s ghost story

When the Chula Vista cop pulled Carlos Abram Reyes over, he thought maybe the 21-year old was driving a Nissan 350Z. He had some reason to think it: the rear diffuser surrounding the twin exhaust …

Through the kind indulgence of the residents and the largesse of friends and loved ones, I have on occasion been allowed to visit St. Malo, a private community of beachside homes situated at the southern …

“These are getting more elaborate every year,” said my fellow media person Callie as we gazed up at the full-scale model helicopter above the two-story set intended to invoke a bombed-out Middle Eastern edifice. We …

There’s a moment near the beginning of Mission: Impossible: Fallout — when can-do American agent Ethan Hunt is receiving the recorded details of his impossible mission via reel-to-reel video embedded in a copy of Homer’s …

You don’t need no stinkin’ badges

Sheila Szilagyi-Noseworthy is getting the upstairs bathroom remodeled in her pretty Poway home. “It’ll be nice,” she muses. “But I always joke that we need a smaller house and a bigger garage. That’s my dream, …

The Adams Avenue Bookstore in Normal Heights is closing after 53 years of operation. I stopped in at the Store Closing sale, and overheard one fellow tell another that he had 16,000 books in his …