Next to edible pizza, Italian beef "sangwitches," and Pekin House egg rolls (made with baby shrimp, morsels of barbecued pork, and peanut butter to bind them), squirrels are what I most miss about Chicago. Apart …

“What would I be if I weren’t strong?” asks one of the characters in director Jeremy Teicher’s Tall As the Baobab Tree. Strength is a quality that reverberates throughout the six films to be screened …

Who needs a Big Ben wind-up to sound the alarm on the morning of Oscar nominations day? Long before the cock crowed, this reporter was parked in front of his trusty Trinitron waiting to have …

Bad news: You have until today to see Kaya Scodelario’s American big screen debut, The Truth About Emanuel, at the Gaslamp. The good news is you can watch it tonight on VOD. The camera loves …

Not unlike the Japanese tourist who kicks off Paolo Sorrentino’s latest cinematic feast by collapsing under the scenic force of his search for the great beauty of Rome, I find myself more than a bit …

Aren't the people's choice awards handed out every Monday morning when the weekend box office receipts hit the trades? It’s been years since I sat down and watched a telecast of The People’s Choice Awards …

Will it be Redford or Streep? Captain Phillips or Philomena? The Croods or Despicable Me 2? Masters of Sex or The Big Bang Theory? Do you really care who or what takes home a Golden …

No sooner had I finished praising Reading Cinemas and Jennifer Deering for their illustrious 40-Foot Films series do I check to see what films are on the January schedule. None. It's over. Finished. Kaput. Even …

People who complain that 2013 has been a lousy year for movies are spending too much time in a multiplex with only three letters in its name. Of the twenty films I single out as …

If a film is so bad that I can’t make it all the way through to the end, then it automatically qualifies as one of the year’s worst. This year found me making a mad …

Having never read Jordan Belfort’s autobiography, The Wolf of Wall Street — which forms the basis of Martin Scorsese’s latest, most outrageous essay on common denominators living the life of upscale, drug-enhanced, and power-infested businessmen …

Tonight brings a stereotypical Jewish Christmas Eve: Chinese food and a movie. The festive pre-show meal takes place at China Too on Fifth, the only Cantonese chow house in town where ambiance is defined by …

When you consider all the questionable "bile" this column pumps, I am amazed to report that one Joseph Genoese has decided to take offense to a goof column written under the guise of "Earl Stiff." …

When news hit this desk that Tom Laughlin died earlier this month of complications from pneumonia, I...just...went...BERSERK! You want berserk? I was in the audience the night Laughlin four-walled the UA Cinema 150 in Oakbrook, …

The mention of Melanie Hamilton in GWTW or the second Mrs. de Winter in Rebecca might be enough to jog a few memories, but seeing how it's been over 20 years since either Olivia de …

My column on the San Diego Film Critics Society year-end picks met with such little resistance that I received a callback. On top of that, I think there’s a Christmas present in my future! While …

Why waste time and money on Miyazaki's animated wallpaper or Disney's sitcom ice princess when this holiday season's foremost anthropomorphic amusement stars our disgraced former mayor, Bob Filner, and could be coming soon to a …

What can be said of a Christmas season wherein Disney's holiday offering ends with its heroine resorting to senseless physical violence to make her point? Remember the good old days when the plight of Bedford …

The only enjoyable part of Out of the Furnace was untangling its plot loopholes on the car ride home. An ex-con (Christian Bale) with the word “fishy” tattooed across his forehead takes a road trip …

Jeffrey Tambor has been a fixture on movie and television screens for the past 40 years, so it’s safe to assume that by now he has become somewhat of an authority on the subject of …

Tales of toddlers dying on film is generally not my genre du jour, but when you present the material in musical form, it’s difficult to resist. Don’t expect wet-eyed characters to break into song in …

Call it one-man show, seminar, or question-and-answer session, Jeffrey Tambor is bringing all three of them to a synagogue near you. The name might not have clicked, but now that you've had a chance to …

Oh, for the sweet irony of someone choosing Last Tango in Paris or The Last Temptation of Christ — two titles that Blockbuster refused to let sully its shelves in their original form, if at …

Blockbuster Video has shelved its last title. The video-rental giant opened its first outlet in Dallas, Texas in 1985. The chain reached its peak in 2004 with 60,000 employees in more than 9000 stores. By …

Tag along for a treat in Tagalog tomorrow night when four members of our town's critical elite — City Beat's Glenn Heath, East County Magazine's Brian Lafferty, Movie Wallas' Yazdi Pithavala, and Cinema Spartan's always …

Who coined the phrase “laughing all the way to the bank” and later amended it to, “You know that bank I used to laugh all the way to? I own it now.” None other than …

For the second year in a row, the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre in Balboa Park's Museum of Photographic Arts will host the San Diego Arab Film Festival. A total of 15 shorts and features …

With 140 films to choose from — the program book is as thick as the city directory — spread out over ten days, a world of cinema (aka the 14th Annual San Diego Asian Film …

Devotee that I am of film noir — Jim Thompson, James Ellroy, and underworld lore, in general — there are a few words in the criminal lexicon that no matter how many times their meanings …

Hollywood on Parade No. B-5 (1933): It's the star-studded premiere of Mae West's I'm No Angel at Grauman's Chinese and the Paramount newsreel cameras were there to capture it for Hollywood on Parade, a series …

My introduction to the concept of trick-or-treating was so bland and uneventful that it has forever soiled my view of the holiday. Never wanting to venture too far from home, the first door we knocked …

Why hasn't Landmark's Ken Cinema hired a new employee in six years? Those fortunate enough to work at Kensington's consecrated single-screen are so crazy loyal to the theater that the thought of leaving never once …

Bad role models frequently make for memorable protagonists. Walter Matthau’s beer-soaked little league coach in The Bad News Bears. Chazz Palminteri as Lilo Brancato’s gangster mentor in A Bronx Tale. Toni Colette's zoned out hitchhiker-turned-babysitter …

To date, Paul Feig’s greatest contribution to film comedy has had nothing to do with bridesmaids or bumbling female cops. Am I the only one who made it all the way through I Am David, …

It's official. After persistent rumors of a 2014 release date, the L.A. Times reports Martin Scorsese's long-awaited The Wolf of Wall Street will open on Christmas Day. That's Christmas Day, 2013. Yesterday, some of the …

What’s Halloween without a Saw sequel? This marks the second holiday in a row minus Jigsaw and a cellar filled with raw teenage bodies to exenterate. Last year at this time Frankenweenie, Sinister, Paranormal Activity …

Upon exiting my fourth screening of Jackass #2, one of the ushers at Reading Cinemas Gaslamp 15 noted, “Man, we heard you laughing all the way in the lobby!” Show me a guy walk into …

One has to admire someone with a set of cast iron balls. Local video satirist Mark Dice can use his to chime the hour. It’s a sunny day in San Diego (duh) and you decide …

Casey Kasem, the voice of Scooby Doo, suck-up extraordinaire on The Jerry Lewis Telethon, and the one man who can count backwards better than all others has been absent from the limelight for some time …

Commercials generally don't offer viewers much to chew on. Next time you're confronted with 10 minutes of pre-show advertisements, try munching on popcorn as a means of counteracting the effects of subliminal seduction. According to …

Three separate trailers that basically show the same cataclysmic incident from three different angles did little to arouse my interest. It looked like more effects-driven outer space shenanigans, this time with Bullock and Clooney on …

The twinkle lights of the Joan and Irwin Jacobs Theatre at the Museum of Photographic Arts will once again shine upon German Currents, the third annual festival of German films. Limited to four films and …

See the job, do the job. Shoot a Glock, punch the clock. Based on a true-life, precinct-clearing scandal that rocked the Philippines, On the Job tells the story of high-ranking politicians who employed the services …

Mom-and-pop movie shop Kensington Video is a film-renters haven for its top-shelf collection and personal — familial, even — service. Oh, and their knowledge of all things Charles Bronson.

What’s this? An intelligent, paranoid suspense thriller with no bullets fired, zero special effects, two sizzling romantic leads who don’t kiss (let alone hit the sheets), and the good sense to pack a tripod?! Summer’s …

Cecil Gaines (Forest Whitaker), an African-American man born into a family of sharecroppers and schooled in the art of “knowing he’s black,” spends 34 years of his life in domestic servitude under seven presidents. While …

Films about missing children are as common today as unmotivated camera movements. Shake a cable box and at any given time you’re bound to find a couple. Few are about adult children and even fewer …

Everything you always wanted to know about honeybees but never thought to ask is answered in the sweet documentary More than Honey. Who knew that one-third of what we eat would not exist without these …

Jean-Pierre Grumbach’s (Melville was the French filmmaker’s nom de guerre, appropriated in honor of his literary correlate, Herman) acutely minimalist take on American gangster films resulted in a formal probity unlike anything cinema has experienced …