Vin Diagram: "Bloodshot," reviewed.

Memento and Iron Man 3 star Guy Pearce with Vin Diesel in a comic book adaptation that shamelessly rips off Memento and Iron Man 3, among other films. (Sony)

If the last movie I ever get to see in the theater is a goddamn Vin Diesel vehicle, I’m gonna die very angry. My review of Bloodshot is here.

Bovine Intervention: "First Cow," reviewed.

Orion Lee and John Magaro play friends and business partners in 1820s Oregon. (A24)

Full disclosure: I saw First Cow, the new 19th century-set frontier drama from cowriter/director Kelly Reichardt last night at a screening that was followed by a Q&A with the filmmaker herself. At the end of the evening, she saw me crutching along—I had arthroscopic surgery to repair my meniscus two weeks ago today—and she held the door for me.

That decent gesture did not in any way influence my NPR review of First Cow, which is here.

The 58-Year Mission: "Nobody Does It Better," reviewed for The Washington Post

Daniel Craig in 2006’s sublime Casino Royale, chronicling a formative mission for a wet-behind-the-ears 007.

I was a big fan of Mark A. Altman and Edward Gross’s two-volume Star Trek oral history The Fifty-Year Mission, so I fairly leapt at the chance to review Nobody Does It Better, their new oral history of the James Bond movies, for the Paper of Record. It’s not as illuminating or contradictory as their Trek books, though I was delighted to find some comments from my pal Matt Gourley within its (seven! hundred!) pages.

Love, American Style: Folger's "The Merry Wives of Windsor," reviewed.

The cast of Aaron Posner’s ERA-era Merry Wives dances the night away. (Cameron Whitman)

The new bellbottoms-era Merry Wives is your last chance to see Aaron Posner direct some of his (and my) favorite actors—and some welcome new faces—at the scheduled-for-renovation Folger Theater for two years. Would’ve been even groovier sans intermission, but it’s fun. Here’s my Washington City Paper review.

Toff Guys: "The Gentlemen," reviewed.

Charlie Hunnam and Hugh Grant in Guy Ritchie’s crime caper The Gentlemen. (Christopher Raphael)

An hour after my review of Guy Ritchie’s last crime comedy posted, someone from Rotten Tomatoes wrote me to ask if I deemed the movie, in my professional opinion as a botanist, Fresh or Rotten. They couldn’t tell! And it was good of them to follow-up. They don’t have an option for Fresh With Reservations, which is where I’m at on this one, as I am compelled to explain in the last paragraphs of my NPR review.

Trenchant Warfare: "1917," reviewed.

George MacKay is a doughboy on a desperate mission. (Francois Duhamel)

Here’s my review of Sam Mendes' 1917. I guess it doesn’t mean much to say it’s the best war movie since Dunkirk (whose Oscar-winning editor, Lee Smith, cut 1917 too) but it is, and it’s first film Mendes has made that I’ve found fully satisfying.

Talking Christmas Songwriting on All Things Considered

Here I am with Rhett Miller at Ram’s Head Live in Baltimore, Dec. 2018.

Christmas music has been an interest of mine for long time, obviously. My yulemix project is in its unfathomable 14th year, I wrote a Slate piece six years ago asking where the follow-ups to “All I Want For Christmas Is You” were (several complicated answers), and now that that last of the breakthrough secular holiday hits is 25 years old, I have at last gotten to bring this passion of mine to its natural habitat: The radio!

Rhett Miller’s band, Old 97s, has been a favorite of mine since I first heard them on KCRW in 2001; I’ve seen them play probably a dozen times since and for me and my pal Brian to sit down with Miller during their tour for their album Love the Holidays was a big thrill. Aloe Blacc’s Christmas Funk was my favorite new holiday release of 2018, and Molly Burch’s The Molly Burch Christmas Album is the one I’ve been spinning the most this year. I was happy to have comments from all three of these songwriters on my All Things Considered piece yesterday.

The Ballad of "Richard Jewell"

Sam Rockwell and Paul Walter Hauser are good actors in a bad-faith movie. (Warner Bros.)

Billy Ray, the screenwriter of Richard Jewell—director Clint Eastwood’s disingenuous dramatization of the 1996 case of a security guard falsely accused of a horrific crime—spoke to my screenwriting class at UCLA in 2002 or 2003. I hope that if he’s still doing this some student will ask him how can justify defaming deceased Atlanta Journal-Constitution reporter Kathy Scruggs in his new movie while giving the (also deceased) FBI agent he has depicted as tipping her off in exchange for sex the dignity of a pseudonym. That malicious act undermines everything in the movie that’s any good. My NPR review is here.