PhotosMore competitive near the pier in Pacific Beach
"It’s summer, so the waves aren’t going to be that big,"
Evelyn Grimm 8 a.m., June 27
Matthew Lickona
As an undergraduate at Thomas Aquinas College near Ojai, California, Matthew Lickona co-founded and ran The Hype, a college lit-mag printed on the school's copier and sold at a dollar a copy to pay off speeding tickets acquired while trying to make movie times in Los Angeles. This may or may not have helped him to land a job at the Reader upon graduation in 1995, but the paper did reprint some of his collegiate Easter Island-based cartoons, and later, his Mudflap Girls series. He has been at the paper ever since, in a variety of capacities: feature writer, wine columnist, church reviewer, restaurant critic, television columnist, editor at large, and now, film critic. Plus some other stuff under various pseudonyms.
He is the author of a couple of books (Swimming with Scapulars, Surfing with Mel), and his essays have appeared in places like The Awl, FirstThings.com, and Doublethink. In his spare time, he likes to write movie pitches and country songs.
Articles by Matthew Lickona
Essays on fatherhood
I was looking forward to trying to raise a saint
I Have Purchased a Grey Cardigan Sweater My wife and I fell in love over wine, bourbon, and cognac. We attended a college with a dry campus, and many evenings were spent sitting in my ...
Onscreen echoes
This week’s new movie releases, including The Book of Henry and All Eyez On Me, sound oddly familiar
47 Meters Down has girls and sharks, All Eyez on Me has rappers and racist cops, Beatriz at Dinner has a high-tension, high-end dinner party, The Book of Henry has boys and brutality and bullets, ...
Middle East movie time (and place)
This week’s new movie releases take up a troubled region’s troubles, from The Mummy to Radio Dreams
Egypt, Iraq, Iran, and Afghanistan all get turns in the cinematic spotlight this week in a monster movie, the story of a dog and his girl, an expat drama, and a war doc, respectively. Some ...
Got to get to the fashion first
I could imagine a star wearing them
Twenty-five-year-old Maurice DJ Ayodam is wearing a white tank top, a midnight-blue velour Adidas track suit, and a custom Breitling watch — custom because he took it to a jeweler and had the face ringed ...
Wonder women
The ladies have their day in this week’s movie releases, including Wonder Woman and Manifesto
It’s not that Sisters Are Doin’ It for Themselves, not entirely, anyway. (That would be, like, crazy. The kind of Brave New World you’d see laid out in a blistering manifesto.) Dudes still have a ...
16th annual iVIE Film Festival plays this weekend in Coronado
“With politics right now, we wanted to show the diversity of America.”
This year, the Media Arts Center San Diego has taken over production of the iVIE Awards & Student Film Festival, a program started in 2001 “to encourage and reward teachers who utilize video as a ...
A gnarly night at the movies
Including The Wedding Plan, A Dark Song, and Baywatch
Gnarly: difficult, dangerous, or challenging. The challenge of Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Men Tell No Tales? To make poor old Johnny Depp appealing again. Annnnd...nope. The difficulty of Baywatch: to make a successful R-rated ...
We bring Hollywood to San Marcos
ComicCon's Adult Swim Funhouse can make money
When horror maestro William Castle parked ambulances outside theaters showing Macabre in 1958, it was a publicity stunt. Today, it would be called experiential marketing, and the operation might well be handled by Hadley Media ...
He crashed Ford F-150 through the Bancroft's wall as band was starting
And there's more —Tower Bar, The Jewel Box, Zombie Lounge, Tobacco Rhoda’s, Wong's
It happens. Rob Logic, owner of the Bancroft in Spring Valley, can rattle off a list, starting with the time in 1964 when James Nelson Spencer smashed his Pontiac Bonneville through the front door of ...
