Objection: hearsay

2020 will be remembered as the year where the #1 movie in America (38 straight weeks and counting!) was "any four consecutive episodes of The Office." 

I wonder if these people “just ask questions” and “do [their] own research” before taking an Advil or boarding an airplane.

“Here’s what to do if you traveled for Thanksgiving”

“Mother Knows Best" and the "Rapunzel Knows Best" reprise are so good, so catchy, and so deeply tied to the characters and their narrative that I expect Zombie Howard Ashman to rise from the grave someday just so he can declare himself jealous of not having written them. 

I don’t want to hate on “Frozen,” especially since it does a few things very well, but the one aspect in particular that “Tangled” truly stomps all over it is in the character animation, particularly human facial expressions and their body language.

Those are great choices, and I’d argue that Lilo & Stitch earns a place with them for the way it completely shatters the typical Disney family dynamic and then slowly builds a whole new one over the course of the story.

I live for moments in movies that I haven’t seen before, and that sequence of Rapunzel swinging back and forth between the elation of freedom and the despair of disappointing her mother is absolutely wonderful. It’s hilarious and heartbreaking at the same time.

I give Return to Oz an B for effort, and an A for daring to be different from the Judy Garland film, but only maybe a C- for execution. It's a movie that I wish I liked more than I do. 

Oh I absolutely agree that they could make a CGI T’challa that would recreate Boseman’s talent and charisma as there’s a drive into deep left field by Castellanos and that’ll be a home run. And so that’ll make it a 4-0 ballgame. I don’t know if I’m going to be putting on this crown again.

I must respectfully defer to your judgment in that regard. I sat through EpIII once and don’t recall anything remarkable audio-wise or otherwise.

Burtt was the primary (possibly only?) sound designer on the original trilogy and the prequels. Those podracer engine sounds are brilliant. One of the fee genuinely passionate debates I’ve ever had about the prequels was which racer sounded best. My friend loved Anakin’s crotch-rocket-y buzz, but for my money you…

The one thing I'll still go to bat for in this movie is Ben Burtt's sound design. That guy is an absolute genius. 

Talking about Star Wars once, my wife asked “how soon did you realize that it was a terrible movie? Did you walk out of the theater crying?” I somewhat sheepishly answered, “no, I saw it probably four or five times before I had to admit that it sucks.” And it’s for the reasons you mention: there are enough tidbits to…

A friend and I were the first people in Chicago to get in line for Phantom Menace tickets. We brought a tent and slept on the sidewalk from Saturday through Wednesday. We were on tv a few times, Roger Ebert came down to hang out for a bit (he famously didn’t care for superfandom of any type, but he was an invested and…

There’s Paul F Tompkins, and then there’s everyone else.

Let me tell you about a little game called World of Warcraft, a game where the cause/effect relationship of your actions is as persistent and reliable as the turning of the Earth.

Black people (black women in particular) were the only thing that kept a goddamned pedophile out of the senate in Alabama a few years ago. White people (and this country in general) owe black people way more than we will ever admit. If this election is even close to a Biden win, we should thank black people.

Eco's style definitely made an esoteric era and setting accessible. And i liked his overall themes. I think what bothered me in particular about the book was the same thing that often bugs me about the o.g. Sherlock Holmes stories, where too much time is spent by secondary characters expressing how completely blown…

An old, ooooollllld recurring Conan O’Brien gag featured Conan checking his answering machine during a “lull” in the show. One message was "Hello, Conan. This is Sean Connery. I'm just sitting at home, watching the movie Dragonheart, in which I play a dragon named Draco. (pause) A dragon named Draco? What the HELL was…