To be fair to Indy, that was a “well, you could come out to the movies with us or we can get you a sitter if you’d rather stay home” situation where she was choosing not to have a sitter more than actively wanting to see the movie. Read more

Well, now that you mention it: Read more

I’m particularly aware of this movie because not only did I review it, my grade-schooler daughter thought it was one of the best movies of the year! Read more

That does sound like a great essay, albeit a little on the short side.  Read more

In some ways, it’s kind of cool. Why on earth does “kids music” exist, generally? Is there really a shortage of regular music that kids can safely listen to? It’s like if there were dozens of G and PG movies out every year that weren’t explicitly about kids, so someone then decided they had to make dozens more movies… Read more

I can only report that I saw both Despicable Me 4 and Garfield, and the one that made me laugh out loud on several non-consecutive occasions wasn’t Despicable Me.  Read more

Yeah, it was the rare case of Disney seeming to want to jump on the DreamWorks bandwagon (though I’d also argue that Shrek was basically DreamWorks-ing Fractured Fairy Tales or any number of self-aware fairy-tale spoofs). The final product isn’t much in that tone (and is much better than any Shrek!) but you can see… Read more

I’m sorry to anyone I baited into clicking on an essay about the five Indiana Jones movies, only to instead heartlessly trick them into reading an essay about the five Indiana Jones movies.  Read more

I mean, audiences didn’t reject Crystal Skull; it made a ton of money. And audiences didn’t turn up for Dial of Destiny, but the ending of that movie, which feels pretty much like the end of the line for the character (and was very much marketed as such), happened.... before the audiences failed to turn up. So yes, of… Read more

One of the weirdest and most persistent misconceptions about working as a critic is that it’s somehow especially satisfying or helpful or profitable (which, lol) to affect an opinion you don’t believe “for clicks” (no one pays by the click). All you can really do is try to communicate something about what you’ve… Read more

I did two in May, so you’re behind on both your cheering and your booing, buddy.  Read more

I think VI and The Motion Picture are both arguably better than II even though I literally ranked II first on a past Run the Series. Read more

There was a Star Wars RTS back when it was a six-movie endeavor — Noel did it in the run-up to Force Awakens and it was excellent! Read more

YEAH you did Read more

Katie took that on already: Read more

It’s not really “digital lighting,” though -- no matter what it looks like (and in a lot of sequences, it looks great), Kaminski and Spielberg were on sets or locations making that movie.  Read more

Billion-dollar movies were barely a thing in 2008, and I wouldn’t say the movie doing well internationally was “inexplicable.” It was a fourth movie in a series that had been widely available for years featuring an international star in one of his most famous roles! Read more

Well, technically speaking, not *now* Run the Series. I did two of them last month! Read more

Crystal Skull did $300 million domestic in 2008 — it made about the same as Iron Man — so I’d say there was a fair amount of demand there. It certainly wasn’t because there was wildly positive buzz about the movie (though I do think the “people hate this one” generalization is a total internet-era exaggeration).

Maybe… Read more

Maybe, unless you count blocking, staging, framing, composition, pacing, cutting, or narrative/thematic coherence. Then, not as much. Read more