My 4-year-old son has pretty good taste in movies, except for his inexplicable fondness for the “Alvin and the Chipmunks” films. He’s lucky he gets to grow up in the Pix...

I love short films. I don’t mean the genre of short films (though there’s little better than a good five-minute picture), but feature-length films that are not that long. ...

The quick synopsis of “Hysteria,” out Friday, is “it’s a romantic comedy about the invention of the vibrator.” In the vaguely-based-on-truth story, Dr. Granville (Hu...

I’m pretty sure that becoming a parent turns you into a psychopath. At least it did for me. On the one hand, I became very aware that taking a life is taking someone’s chi...

I don’t remember what I wanted to be when I was 11, but I’m sure it wasn’t a dancer (and this was long before I’d discover that I can only really dance if I have a min...

I never really believed the story about how late-19th-century audiences, when they saw “The Arrival of a Train at La Ciotat Station,” ran from the screen, afraid the cinem...

When I was a high-school teacher, I lived near enough to the school that I would occasionally see my students out and about, living their daily lives — or, in the case when ...

It’s a good thing I don’t work for the AFI Silver in Silver Spring, because I would immediately sign over my entire paycheck so I could see all the movies there (I current...

I think anyone can be forgiven for thinking that Willem Dafoe is absolutely, psychotically nuts. Sure, he can play sympathetic characters, like in “Platoon,” but he just s...

Six words — actually, one word used six times — have set off a battle that could keep the people who most need to see “Bully” from seeing it. The documentary, out Frid...

I don’t know why it’s a continual surprise to me that Woody Harrelson can act. He’s been nominated for an Academy Award twice (for “The People vs. Larry Flynt" and “...

I did not want to see “21 Jump Street.” The screening was at the end of a long day in the middle of an even longer week, but I had to see it because I was going to be inte...

In “Shakespeare in Love,” Judi Dench needed only eight minutes of screen time to create a nuanced, powerful character and give a performance that would win her an Oscar. S...

“Undefeated,” which won the Oscar for best documentary last Sunday and opens locally Friday, is the kind of documentary I recommend to people who don’t particularly like...

The danger in predicting anything, especially horse races and awards shows, is balancing what you want to happen with what you think will happen. This year’s Oscar race seem...