The Yule Prologue: Rogue One: A Star Wars Story, reviewed.

Felicity Jones and Diego Luna lead a small team of rebel guerillas in Rogue One.

My NPR review of what is probably the second-most-review-proof movie of the year after Captain America: Civil War (which I reviewed) is here.

And I Am Not Lying: My You're a Good Man, Charlie Brown co-star Jeff Simmermon is recording a comedy album at the Black Cat tonight.

Jeff Simmermon looked only marginally less intimidating than this when we first met in 1986.

My boyhood chum Jeff Simmermon is recording his debut comedy album tonight at the Black Cat. I wrote about him for today's Washington City Paper. 

We'll Always Have Casablanca: Allied, reviewed.

Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard as glamorous spies in Allied. (Paramount)

Here's my review of Robert Zemeckis' high-tech-but-old-fashioned WWII espionage thriller Allied. It's meant to evoke a genre that includes great films like Alfred Hitchcock's Notorious or Carol Reed's The Third Man. Or lesser Graham Greene works, like this one.

Pop Culture Happy Hour No. 322: Arrival and Seratonin-Boosting Pop Culture

Jeremy Renner and Amy Adams, humans.

I was delighted as always to join my friends Linda Holmes, Glen Weldon, Stephen Thompson, and Jessica Reedy for this week's badly-needed Pop Culture Happy Hour, wherein no one mentions politics at all because that's not how we do on this show. Here's the episode.

The name the lazy file-clerk in my brain was trying to retrieve while Stephen was talking about how much he loves the Anthrax & Public Enemy version of Public Enemy's jam "Bring the Noise" was Clyde Stubblefield: Clyde is the link between Stephen's picks and mine, because he was James Brown's drummer at Brown's late-60s-to-mid-70s peak. That drums sample you hear at the end of "Bring the Noise" — probably the most-sampled ever — is Stubblefield's, originally recorded for Brown's "Funky Drummer" in 1970.

Halo, Goodbye: Bleed for This, reviewed.

Here's my NPR review of Bleed for This, writer-director Ben Younger's new biopic about super middleweight champion Vinny Paz's unlikely-but-true comeback from a massive injury. Not essential, but not bad. 

Desert Heat: Lazy Eye, reviewed.

Lucas Near-Verbrugghe and Aaron Costa Ganis in Tim Kirkman's Lazy Eye.

I wrote this review of writer-director Tim Kirkman's romantic drama Lazy Eye the day after the election. It's not a pan, but I think I owe Kirkman that disclaimer anyway. It was difficult to focus on a movie that day, especially one about gay people made by a gay person. The world just got a lot more frightening—a little more for LGBT folk than for straight folk like me, but only a little.

Doctor Strange, or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Review Movies on the Radio

Tilda Swinton and Benedict Cumberbatch in Dr. Strange (Marvel).

Something new for me: Reviewing movies on the radio. Here's my Weekend Edition Sunday assessment of Doctor Strange, wherein Marvel hands the role of brilliant, arrogant, goateed rich-guy Avenger from Robert Downey, Jr., the most recent movie Sherlock Holmes, to Benedict Cumberbatch to the most recent TV Sherlock Holmes.