Trump is going to make immigration so difficult that many of the doctors and innovators who come to our country to work will just have to make their medical advances elsewhere. And he's going to make education costs so prohibitive as to dissuade Americans from going to medical school. And then he's going to take…

I think quite a few viewers picked it apart for what they saw as logical inconsistencies, the main one being the aliens invading a planet that was two-thirds covered in water when water happens to be a substance they're vulnerable to. I think that's a pretty nitpicky reason to condemn the movie, though; humans are…

It may be uncool, but I agree with you. It's a great movie, and arguably ahead of its time, being one of the first big screen depictions of superheroes in the "real world," which years later became its own subgenre.

He didn't direct Devil, but I agree, it wasn't a half-bad B movie.

You're pessimistic. I figure we're safe for at least a week after the inauguration. Then again, SNL is on the night after…

…Uh, the best? The Village is stylish and contains some evocative moments, but it was also pretty definitively the beginning of his fall from grace. I'd put Unbreakable as his best, with Signs right behind it.

Ah, I found yours, as well! Departures! I had the privilege of seeing that on the big screen at the Virginia Theater for Ebertfest, in what I think may have been my first year of attendance. I don't know if I've ever heard so many sniffles in a theater. Really lovely movie.

This conversation is making me nostalgic, which was also the subject of the journal entry I'm thinking of ("Autumn Leaves of Red and Gold"). I almost added an edit to my first reply yesterday to mention that the story about your great-grandfather definitely rang a bell. It's pretty cool that we both ended up here.

That's fantastic, re: the story about your great-grandfather and Ebert's response. I felt the exact same way about getting a response from him; I literally exclaimed "yes!" with a triumphant fist in the air the first time he replied to one of my comments. (It was an embarrassing story about a high school crush of…

One of the highlights of my life: eating at Steak and Shake with Roger Ebert. He sat with a group of us on the last day of his yearly film festival in Champaign, and it was frigging awesome. He'd lost his voice at this point, but he listened to us talk about movies and seemed, hopefully, to enjoy himself.

I wish we had his voice right now, though. I really enjoyed his blog, and he wasn't shy about getting political. I'm sure he'd have a lot to say.

She really is brilliant. She seems equally at home doing big and flashy, like her Katherine Hepburn role in The Aviator, and more subtle stuff, like her role in Heaven, a little-seen film where she pretty much knocked my socks off. I wish she was as prolific as Streep.

Amy Adams has been doing quietly great work for a while now. And she was fantastic in Arrival.

If only! Oh, you meant for other people.

I appreciate the return-rant, haha.

Different strokes and all that. I could've forgiven Rogue One for its bleh character work if I thought it succeeded in other respects, but for me the film was just a total mess. Going in I thought it might attempt to be an actual espionage film, similarly to how Winter Soldier took on a '70s paranoid thriller vibe. …

I was referring to Kylo Ren as the third member of the trio, not Poe.

Apparently before their deaths were less "we're all in this together" and more "we're fucked, and also still hate each other." That might've been a bridge too far for Disney.

If that's what they were going for then I don't think that idea was clearly conveyed in the movie. I definitely got the impression we were supposed to be swooning over these two beautiful people and their cliched "initial annoyance turns into love" romance. Even the ending seems to imply that their life together…

No. Westworld has filled that quota for the next two years.