Race Bore: Supremacy, reviewed.

It's a cruel irony that Joe Anderson's performance as an Aryan Nation asshole who takes a black family hostage is the best thing about the grim, dim Supremacy.

My review of Supremacy, Deon Taylor's dreary thriller marketed under that meaningless, catnip-for-dim-people phrase, Based on Actual Events, is on The Dissolve today. It's a deeply unpleasant genre movie that's convinced it's saying something bold about Race in America. I had to resort to quoting the film's press notes. I don't feel good about it, but if you read them you'll see I had no choice.

This Could Be the Beginning of a Beautiful Marriage: We'll Never Have Paris, reviewed.

Writer/codirector/star Simon Helberg and Melanie Lynskey in We'll Never Have Paris.

My review of Simon Helberg's autobiographical romantic comedy – hey there, Buddy, are you sure you want to do this? – We'll Never Have Paris is on The Dissolve today.

It's a Straight: Poker Night, reviewed.

Beau Mirchoff has the cheek to try to play a tough-guy lead in Poker Night.

I don't know anything about poker, but I gave writer/director Greg Francis' feature debut Poker Night 2.5 out of a possible five starts for The Dissolve. Which according to this ranking of various hands in poker, makes it the equivalent of a straight.

Sorry about the gross photo. I didn't have many choices.

Won't Someone Please Think of the 'Tweens? The PG-13 at 30.

Amrish Puri rips out the heart of mainstream cinema in 1984's Temple of Doom.

To wrap up The Dissolve's Movie of the Week examination of Joe Dante's Gremlins, Keith Phipps asked me to write a reflection on the PG-13, the lukewarm rating introduced in the summer of 1984 in response to the outcry that greeted the PG-rated Gremlins' violence and darkness, as well as that of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, released two weeks earlier. I was honored to oblige.

A surprising, random fact of which I was unaware: Gremlins, a horror comedy and the fourth-highest grossing film of 1984, was released the very same day as that year's second-biggest hit, Ivan Reitman's horror comedy Ghostbusters. That would never happen now, and yet apparently it didn't hurt either of those films back then. Neither of them could out-earn Beverly Hills Cop, however. The fact an R-rated action comedy was the biggest hit of the year is another reminder of how much Hollywood has changed in a generation-and-a-half.

Every Day I Write the Book: Reach Me, reviewed.

Kevin Connelly & Tom Berenger arrange one of those popular public readings of self-help books.

It's no Jack Reacher, this star-studded, tone-deaf ensemble drama. Reviewed for The Dissolve.

Can of Wormholes, or Accretion Discography: My Interview with Kip Thorne, Interstellar Progenitor and Scientific Adviser

Kip Thorne on the set of Interstellar. (Paramount/Warner Bros./Legendary Pictures)

For my day job at Air & Space / Smithsonian, I interviewed Kip Thorne, the theoretical physicist who with his friend the movie producer Lynda Obst, conceived the film Interstellar back in 2006. Thorne remained closely involved with the picture throughout its writing, production, and editing, and has now published a 324-page companion to the film called The Science of "Interstellar" laying out his scientific rationalization for every aspect of its story -- even the Love Tesseract Wormhole.

DUH: Don't read this interview if you intend to see Interstellar but haven't yet.

And if that's your situation, and you live anywhere in the Washington, DC diaspora, make sure to catch the movie in 70mm IMAX at either the National Air & Space Museum downtown or at the Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center out by Dulles International Airport. I've seen it both this way and in digital IMAX, and the 70mm presentation is more painterly and majestic. It also sounds better, curiously. The muddy sound mix we talked about on Pop Culture Happy Hour last week (based on a digital IMAX screening in Silver Spring, Maryland) was not a problem when I saw the film again at NASM in 70mm.