Contact opens with one of the most beautiful sequences ever created on film. We get a perspective of Earth from orbit, slowly rotating in the sunshine, and at full blare we hear what the universe hears of Earth: radio and television, a multitude of channels, all jumbled together and beamed into space…

I’m not sure what to make of Mad City. This media-gone-mad Costa-Gravas flick doesn’t go the satire route a la the later Wag the Dog — instead it tries more for parable but ends up so gosh-darn earnest that it falls flat…

I swear, half the people in the audience weren’t even alive Grease was first released in 1978. I was part of the other half. Grease was my first grown-up movie — I was nine, and I went with my mom. I remember being embarrassed by all that sex stuff in the movie. (And it’s so tame nowadays!)…

I’ve been wondering where all the powerful female characters in movies are, and whaddaya know, Murder at 1600 and Absolute Power showed me. Tips for girls — the keys to holding power are these: you must be young, gorgeous, and dead.

Jack Stanton isn’t Clinton at all, of course. No, it’s just a coincidence that he’s the doughnut-chomping, skirt-chasing, ‘I-feel-your-pain’-crying governor of a Southern state who’s running for president….

The Man in the Iron Mask is no Titanic. It’s not bad, actually — better than I was hoping or expecting. It’s got some cool swordfighting, wonderful costumes, and great performances from Gabriel Byrne, Jeremy Irons, and, of course, Leonardo DiCaprio in dual roles. But it’s also too long, suffers from too many accents…

But forsooth, this is a pretty play! The words are Shakespeare’s, but the setting is a stylized, mythical, tropical city of Verona in the present day. Swords have become guns, and the sons of the feuding Capulet and Montague families have become rich-kid gangs whose rumbles bring out armies of cops…

But the thing that really left a sour taste in my mouth was a betrayal by the moviemakers of deputy U.S. marshal Sam Gerard…

Nicolas Cage is Cameron Poe, a poor dumb macho jerk — and I mean that in the best possible way, I swear. He’s not really a criminal, just criminally stupid…

Hollywood has finally achieved the ultimate in style over substance. Dark City is like a two-hour music video aimed at adolescent boys, full of dead naked women and nightmarish visions directly cribbed from Terry Gilliam movies and old Doctor Who episodes…