Atomictown: The Critic of Pure Reason
Published Thursday, Jul. 02, 2009

At heart, I think all of us want to be a criminal. If I'm just wrong and that's just me, then I amend my statement to say we all want to be cops--I don't even know what crimes are, let alone how one "commits" them--but there's got to be something to explain the enduring appeal of crime stories.

Published Monday, Jun. 29, 2009

As the first movie I gave an F to, Transformers holds a special place in my heart.

Published Friday, Jun. 26, 2009

If zombies tried to pull an outbreak on us these days, those things would be screwed.

Published Tuesday, Jun. 23, 2009

Maybe this is just the homelessness talking, but after a while, doing the same thing every day gets kind of old.

Published Monday, Jun. 22, 2009

My thirteen wives and four husbands are always shocked when we hear about how hard marriage is for some people.

Published Thursday, Jun. 18, 2009

Martial Arts Month has been a fun one for me. Last week I got to unleash my whip-fast sat sao technique on the Black Needle Gang, who was upset I'd revealed the secret of their Ten Form Fist. Tragically, my life went rapidly downhill and hasn't yet recovered when I had to watch 1989's Robot Ninja, the subject of this month's Big Awful Friday and capper to a feature I'll have to visit again as soon as I regrow the eyes I lost in that fight.

Published Tuesday, Jun. 16, 2009

As a former mole-person of the New York City subway tunnels, it always gets me to see the old homestead portrayed so biasedly in movies.

Published Friday, Jun. 12, 2009

When the rebellion rolls around, you'd better sign on board for the big win, because if movies have taught us anything it's that the renegades always win.

Published Friday, Jun. 12, 2009

When the rebellion rolls around, you'd better sign on board for the big win, because if movies have taught us anything it's that the renegades always win. Why? Point to their energy and idealism, sure, but the real reason the rebellion always triumphs is that they've got all the hot chicks.

Published Tuesday, Jun. 09, 2009

The reason comedy is an art and not a science is that in comedy, you can follow the exact same formula that did great last time, only to have it blow up in your face like an unfunny bomb, which is crazy because explosions are always funny.

Published Monday, Jun. 08, 2009

After years of painstaking research, I've reached the conclusion hangovers are a capitalist plot invented to prevent us all from being drunk all the time.

Published Friday, Jun. 05, 2009

As a man of extreme national influence, I like to take a look at the tough issues.

Published Monday, Jun. 01, 2009

People talk about returning to their roots like it's a good thing, but I think they're forgetting that roots are usually surrounded by half-buried garbage and bug-digested corpses.

Published Tuesday, May. 26, 2009

I may never have felt more doomed gearing up to see a movie than I felt on my way to see Dance Flick.

Published Monday, May. 25, 2009

For a certain type of person -- mostly guys who eat dinner off junk mail and get confused when someone wants to interrupt our GoldenEye game to go meet girls (i.e. superstuds) -- Terminator Salvation had a basically perfect trailer.

Published Friday, May. 22, 2009

I think it was Gandhi who once said "If we weren't meant to whale the hell out of each other, we would never have been given fists."

Published Monday, May. 18, 2009

There are some things that, through the virtue of sheer awesomeness, become virtually immune to criticism.

Published Friday, May. 15, 2009

I've said it before, but one of the biggest keys to success is in something as simple as your name.

Published Tuesday, May. 12, 2009

Back before I struck it rich telling people what to think about popular entertainment, I worked for a chain of packing and shipping stores.

Published Monday, May. 11, 2009

And now, a humiliating, soul-searing confession: I have never seen a complete episode of the original Star Trek.

Published Friday, May. 08, 2009

Apparently there's a real movement going on in the French horror scene right now, which is news to me because I always thought everywhere was America.

Published Monday, May. 04, 2009

I always like beginnings and origin stories more than tales from a character's later life.

Published Monday, Apr. 27, 2009

High on the list of fictional characters I like much better than anyone in real life: Idris Elba as Stringer Bell in HBO's The Wire.

Published Friday, Apr. 24, 2009

I am a gambling man. Every year I bet the Mariners will not only win the Series, they'll cure cancer and invent robots that will sweep our floors while other robots feed us grapes. Back in '79, when I was floating around the ether for the 12th straight millennium, I bet I'd be born within the next five years. Cleaned up on that one.

Published Thursday, Apr. 23, 2009

If there's one genre that keeps on recycling the same plot lines over and over again, it's the nature documentary.

Published Monday, Apr. 20, 2009

One of the cool things about getting to see the best and worst of everything that comes out is you get unnecessarily familiar with the work of writers and directors who might otherwise go totally unnoticed.

Published Friday, Apr. 17, 2009

I have tried, so far, to use this space to highlight the more obscure films I've stumbled across/been assaulted by in my years as an unwashed recluse.

Published Tuesday, Apr. 14, 2009

There's nothing more fun for everyone than ultra-hip arguments about whether that guy who used to be cool is still cool now that he's all popular and junk.

Published Monday, Apr. 13, 2009

Unless I'm mistaken, and I really was too lazy to look it up, this week marks the two-year anniversary of this column.

Published Thursday, Apr. 09, 2009

In certain corners of the Internet, ferocious debate rages as to what makes a “real” zombie.

Published Monday, Apr. 06, 2009

Surprise! A clown just kidnapped your girlfriend.

Published Friday, Apr. 03, 2009

Here’s how you know Joseph Gordon-Levitt is worth watching: he’s got looks, youth, talent and opportunity, but he persistently throws it away on awesome little movies barely anyone goes to see.

Published Wednesday, Apr. 01, 2009

I appear to be stuck in a time warp.

Published Monday, Mar. 30, 2009

From the continuing case files of studly HBO actors in thankless movie roles: Aidan Gillen of "The Wire" as the unstoppable criminal mastermind in 12 Rounds.

Published Monday, Mar. 23, 2009

My favorite part of this job is definitely attending rom-coms and kids' movies by myself, but second to that, what I like best is being subjected to the same trailer up to a dozen times before the movie it's advertising actually comes out.

Published Tuesday, Mar. 17, 2009

If there's one Hollywood cliche that needs to be taken behind the barn, shot down like an old horse, and ground into cinematic dog food, it's the heartfelt speech some dope makes to win back his girlfriend.

Published Monday, Mar. 16, 2009

Back when I was a wealthy man, I had it all: twenty channels of HBO, a small, dirty apartment above a bar, all the spaghetti and Winco-brand spaghetti sauce I could force myself to swallow.

Published Monday, Mar. 09, 2009

So who here was cool enough to have read the Watchmen graphic novel before we'd all heard they were making a movie out of it?

Published Friday, Mar. 06, 2009

The tricky thing in talking about bad movies is that for some of us--failures, mostly, much like the terrible things we like making fun of--bad equals good. So when I say that, until very recently, 2000's Voodoo Academy was the worst movie I'd ever seen, this could create the confusion that it's nonstop riotous fun.

Published Tuesday, Mar. 03, 2009

It's time to throw down our vodka bottles, dump the ash out of our shoes, and hustle off to church, for the Lord has clearly heard our prayers: a new Street Fighter movie is upon us.

Published Wednesday, Feb. 25, 2009

Who among you is "fired up" to see Fired Up!?

Published Monday, Feb. 23, 2009

For us movie critics, a Bat Signal blazes in the sky whenever a French foreign film hits theaters.

Published Monday, Feb. 16, 2009

I'm far too cowardly to have tested this out myself, but theoretically speaking, I think horror movie slashers might just be misunderstood superheroes.

Published Tuesday, Feb. 10, 2009

Once in a bar (man, I wish I had a story that didn't start that way), I expressed to the girls we were with that if I had the money, I'd retire then and there.

Published Monday, Feb. 09, 2009

There may be no better example of the depth of human futility than the professional movie industry.

Published Monday, Feb. 02, 2009

When I heard the new action-thriller Taken was PG-13 instead of the expected R, I immediately made the world's wittiest and most insightful prediction about how it was destined to suck.

Published Tuesday, Jan. 27, 2009

On the bitterly cold afternoon I went to see Frost/Nixon, the marquee had spelled the second "N" of Nixon's name backwards.

Published Monday, Jan. 26, 2009

If you've ever got a significant chunk of your life you feel like just throwing away, I recommend watching complete horror franchises.

Published Monday, Jan. 19, 2009

Biopics have the odd distinction of being simultaneously empowering and utterly demoralizing.

Published Tuesday, Jan. 13, 2009

Paradoxically, the reason I love horror movies so much is because so damn many of them are so damn bad.


Submit your own events!
Find a Job