That's not entirely fair, of course. This new Star Wars has lots more ladies than usual, and besides, the repeated bits are always given a little tweak here and there. Still, I did have a …

The Kargoyle, a chop-topped 1967 Cadillac Miller-Meteor Funeral Coach of dubious practicality and somewhat mysterious origin, slunk and slithered its way into the Adams Avenue Vons lot in Normal Heights and parked next to me. …

When my friend Jon visits from from the murk and damp of Michigan, he always looks up for what he thinks of as a real San Diego sky: not merely cloudless, not merely blue, but …

What indeed, Elvis? But without war, hate, and myopia, we wouldn’t have the outsiders who drive the drama in so many of our stories. Like the fish-man and the woman with something fishy about her …

Smash the American Idol. Still The Voice. America’s Got Talent, but let it stay at home and delight the household and its gods (or at least its ancestors). But what if the household is not …

It’s not his real name, but the name he gave me wasn’t real, either. He’s navigated his dual wheelchairs, one for his luggage and one for himself, with impressive efficiency — and even agility, despite …

A while back, I sent my collegiate son a text with the following quote from a letter by F. Scott Fitzgerald to his collegiate daughter: “Once one is caught up in the material world, not …

Okay, people, spoilers ahead. YOU’VE BEEN WARNED. Justice League: Aquaman’s powers mostly go unused. BPM: AIDS kills. Frank Serpico: The hero cop of Serpico is a hero cop. Bill Nye: Science Guy: Bill Nye defends …

What is The Square? Well, it’s a piece of art, so there are no doubt any number of interpretations. But I’ll hazard a guess: The Square is writer-director Ruben Östlund’s latest salvo against institutions that, …

Novitiate? The Devils. Last Flag Flying? The Last Detail. Murder on the Orient Express? Murder on the Orient Express. No Greater Love? It ain’t exactly Winter Soldier, but it does involve war footage and traumatized …

David Spatafore, the “visionary” and “primary owner” at Blue Bridge Hospitality, goofed with the name of his first restaurant. “We called it MooTown Creamery, and the concept was that we were going to make homemade …

The House Where Nobody Lives sits out on Fuerte Drive in El Cajon. Kids sometimes visit at night to scare themselves: “Don’t come back” has been scratched into the black-and-white poster of a shirtless and …

As the Beast used to say in the old X-Men comic books, “Oh my stars and garters.” (And yes, that’s a cheap way of referencing this week’s comic-book movie release, Thor: Ragnarok. Let’s get back …

Guns are fun, but when directors really want to paint the screen red, they go for the stabbing, slicing, slashing goodness of blades. And this week sees the opening of 78/52, a documentary about maybe …

It was the last undeveloped ocean view lot on La Mesa’s Panorama Drive, and the view was what made artist/designer Mel Taylor bite. The 7000+ square-foot home he nestled against the steep slope features decks …

“Qualcomm: why you love your smartphone,” proclaims the company’s regional ad campaign, the one you may have seen on billboards, at bus stops, or on electric taxi carts around town. Curious: ­an ad campaign that …

It’s tough being a kid, especially when Mom is an unemployed stripper. Or a suicidal lover. Or something of a child herself. And then there’s Dad — you know, the distant guy who pushes you …

“My soul is humbled when I see the way little ones accept their lot,” says Mrs. Cooper at the end of Night of the Hunter. “Lord save little children. The wind blows and the rains …

Suffering Sappho! There certainly are a lot of new movie releases this week! (Yes, that’s Wonder Woman’s catchphrase, chosen in honor of the Wonder Woman origin story biopic Professor Marston & the Wonder Women.) And …

That thundering synthesized flop you hear is Blade Runner 2049 coming in well below industry expectations; guess you people don’t have much use for highbrow, three-hour sci-fi epics that are long on scenery and short …

I moved from Normal Heights to La Mesa in 1999, mostly because I wanted a yard for my kids. But also because an old woman was attacked across the street from my house on East …

Green light glows off the stippled white exterior of Priveé Lounge Bar, perched above the Plaza San Angel on Tijuana’s Avenida Sonora. (Just off Boulevard Agua Caliente before the Club Campestre.) Inside is white as …

Ryan Gosling may be at the center of Blade Runner 2049, but he’s surrounded by women: his boss at the police station, his opposite number on the corporate side of the investigation, his digital girlfriend, …

Royals: they’re just like us! King Haakon VII of Norway liked to play hide and seek with his grandchildren and even pretended to have conversations with his grandson’s teddy bear! I mean, he also had …

“The Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles,” says San Diego Comic Art Gallery manager TJ Shelvin, “are unlike anything else. On the one hand, you’ve got this major machine that it became” — six movies, six TV …

“I think it’s significant,” says Shrabani Basu, “that Queen Victoria, in those days, over 100 years ago, chose to learn Urdu,” the language of a people under her rule. “And that she placed a young …

Wally Wood is regarded as one of the great comic-book artists of all time. He was with Mad magazine from the very beginning; he created Daredevil’s red costume; he (probably) drew the Disneyland Memorial Orgy …

At the Lego Ninjago Movie press conference held last week at Legoland Carlsbad, a child asked the film’s assembled cast and crew, “What happened to the cat?” The tot was referring to the monstrous beast …

I mean, it's the movies, so what else is new? But still. The Wound has violence done to a bunch of guys' sexy bits. Also, sex and violence. mother! has much more violence than sex, …

“We live in cities you’ll never see onscreen,” sang Lorde on “Team,” trying to make obscurity sound cool but fooling nobody. If it were really cool you wouldn’t have to make a cool song about …

Simon & Simon was a buddy detective series set in San Diego that ran for eight seasons on CBS during the ’80s. Veronica Mars put a teenage girl in a noirish milieu and managed three …

It is out, but is It good? Well...there are good bits. But it doesn’t touch Get Out as the year’s best horror flick. Because the real horror is the evil that men do. The monster …

Poor Dane DeHaan. He started 2017 by starring in the criminally underrated A Cure for Wellness, then starred in the monumental flop Valerian and the City of a Thousand Planets, and now here he is …

If last year’s The Edge of Seventeen felt like the kids of today as portrayed by a (smart, sensitive) grown-up, this year’s Get Big is very much the kids of today as portrayed by the …

The wife and I like cream in our coffee. So do our kids. Trader Joe’s in La Mesa charges $3.29 for a half-pint. Walmart charges $4.14 for a full pint. I resolved to make the …

On my first morning in San Diego — July 1995 — I set off walking toward downtown. I was young and I didn’t know anybody, so I went to be where people were. Once there, …

It’s stupid jokes week here at The Big Screen... Patti Cake$ fails to rise. Good Time mostly isn't, though it is pretty good. Leap! should take a flying...leap. Lemon is a lemon. The Trip to …

My first thought upon leaving co-directors Benny and Josh Safdie’s Good Time (Josh co-wrote, while Benny co-stars alongside an intense, controlled Robert Pattinson) was: A soundtrack in search of a movie. That’s not altogether fair, …

You know what I’d like to do? I’ll tell you what I’d like to do. I’d like to host a redneck film festival. Maybe not this year, what with all the awfulness surrounding disenfranchised white …

With Endless Poetry, Chilean surrealist (super-realist?) Alejandro Jodorowsky continues the fantastical memoir he began in 2013’s Dance of Reality. But where that first film made a tragic-absurdist hero out of young Alejandro’s father — he …

A strong week at the movies, if not necessarily a happy one for the kiddies. Not so much the ones in the seats — though we’re not holding out much hope for The Nut Job …

This was...not a great week for movies. The big drama? Well acted, badly built. The big adaptation? A fizzle by all accounts. (Your humble correspondents saw it coming and steered clear.) The “starring Academy-Award winning …

Mark came to Comic-Con from Laguna aboard his friend’s 85-foot, $6 million yacht Motown, a sleek gray vessel tied up alongside the Embarcadero just south of the convention center. “I’ve been here every year for …

Walmart Neighborhood Market carries El Jimador reposado tequila for $15.97 a bottle, which is $4 cheaper than my local liquor store, which is why I went there on the night of July 7th. As I …

As of this writing, Rotten Tomatoes features only one positive review of The Emoji Movie: that of Betsy Bozdech of Common Sense Media. Brave, brave Betsy. Of course, it’s not as bold as being one …

Director Christopher Nolan wants to remind folks why they go to movie theaters — instead of, you know, watching a movie on a telephone. In this critic’s humble opinion, he succeeds admirably in that effort …

William Oldroyd’s elegantly executed debut feature Lady Macbeth may prove to be the sort of quiet breakout for star Florence Pugh that Martha Marcy May Marlene was for Elizabeth Olsen (as opposed to the more …

Like Scott Marks, the other film critic here at the Reader, I thought the first two films of the rebooted Planet of the Apes series were excellent. Which is why I was so saddened to …

Pity the critic. Once, he bestrode the gulf between artist and audience like a colossus (no, not the big metal guy from Deadpool), raising up and casting down the creators, guiding and shaping a lively …

The La Mesa Police Department’s Citizens Academy is, in the words of training sergeant Kate Lynch, “a great way to share the unfortunate realities of the job without putting citizens in harm’s way. It helps …