Movie Death Match: "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" v. "E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial"

New pod! We took the critical insight of Filmspotting and added the primal thrill of bloodsport to create Movie Death Match!

In our Disclosure Day themed debut episode, two "passionate and highly credentialed advocates" argue the relative merits of Steven Spielberg's two friendly-visitor classics. Representing 1977's Close Encounters of the Third Kind is Margaret Weitekamp, curator nonpareil! Pounding the table for 1982's E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial is Jen Chaney, critic extraordinaire!

I'm grateful to them both for their game participation and to Filmspotter-in-Chief Adam Kempenaar for the opportunity to administer firm-but-fair cinematic jurisprudence.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Jaws"

Having done the dirty work of surveying all three Jaws sequels for the Paper of Record earlier this summer, it’s only right that three-fourths of the original PCHH cast had me back to talk about the titanic original. Which I’ve seen on the big screen twice this summer.

Snatching Defeat from the "Jaws" of Victory: A Chronicle of Sequels Unremembered

Can’t believe I forgot to mention that Jaws 3D heel Simon MacCorkindale starred in a short-lived NBC series about a shapeshifting crimefighter called Manimal that premiered two months after the shark three-quel hit cinemas.

Can’t believe I forgot to mention that the boat The Widow Brody uses to impale Jaws the Fourth in Jaws: The Revenge was named Neptune’s Folly.

I did remember to mention that J:TR cast member Mario Van Peebles directed a film 40 years after Jaws called U.S.S. Indianapolis: Men of Courage that dramatized the events Robert Shaw related in his immortal monologue from Jaws, but that was cut for space. Anyway, my contribution to the Paper of Record’s Jaws anniversary package — The Sequels, and a unified theory of sequelology — is here.

Summer of '82: "The Future Was Now," reviewed.

Walter Koenig and Paul Winfield on the set of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, part of the genre Class of ‘82.

If you’re a certain kind of cinephile, you probably know a few things with the rote force of scripture: That Conan — the barbarian, not the talk show host — philosophized about what is best in life. That E.T. phoned home. That Spock sacrificed himself to save the crew of the starship Enterprise. That patricidal “replicant” Roy Batty, in the final moments of his own brief life, eulogized his vanishing memories as “tears in rain.”

My Washington Post review of Chris Nashawaty’s The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982 is here.

"Masters of the Air," recapped.

Callum Turner, Austin Butler, and a B-17. (Apple TV+)

With seven years as an editor for Air & Space / Smithsonian, may it rest in power, under my belt, I was the only man for the job of telling you which real American historical figures are played by real English and Irish actors. My Vulture recaps of Masters of the Air, showrunner John Orloff’s long-delayed Apple TV+ adaptation of Donald L. Miller’s nonfiction history book, are here.

Don't Fly With Me: Arena's "Catch Me If You Can," reviewed.

Hayley Podschun, Alexandra Frohlinger, Christian Thompson and Rhett Guter in Arena’s revised-but-still unsatisfying Catch Me If You Can. (Margot Schulman)

Catch Me If You Can, the Hairspray songwriters’ attempt to musicalize Steven Spielberg’s beloved 2002 film, didn’t take off on Broadway 11 years ago. The revised version now at Arena Stage doesn’t work, either. For the Washington City Paper.

Notes on Dinosaur Camp: Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom, reviewed and discussed on Pop Culture Happy Hour.

Chris Pratt, velociraptor whisperer. (Universal)

Here's my review of Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. And below you can hear Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson, and Glen Weldon discuss the movie and its place in the Jurassic-iad with me in the fourth chair. I regret that it never occurred to me to refer to this film as Jurassic 5 even though "Sum of Us" is an all-timer shadowboxing jam. I also regret that none of us, not even Thompson, thought to mention the moment in Jurassic 5 when it seems like Ted Levine from The Silence of the Lambs is about to start singing "See My Vest." You'll know the one I mean.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom and What's Making Us Happy

Pop Culture Happy Hour

Air-Conditioned Fun in the Summertime 3: Presenting My Third Annual Village Voice Summer Movie Want-List

The Nice Guys, which I expect history shall remember as my favorite film of the summer of 2016, came out last week; Captain America: Civil War, probably the best of the Marvel bunch, is old news. But Memorial Day weekend is still the traditional start of the summer movie season. Here, for the third consecutive Memorial Day weekend, is my Village Voice list of summer movies I want to see. Light up a phone in any of these and you'll hear from me.

Enjoy those X-Men, everybody! I'll be observing the holiday at the AFI, taking in Spartacus in its 212-minute entirety.