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Stories by Matthew Lickona

Look back in anger...

...or in hilarity with this week's new film releases, including Hostiles

Truth be told, there's not a lot on the new release front this week for some reason, and what there is has a decidedly backward-looking feel. Hostiles goes back to the settling (read: claiming) of ...

A friendly chat with Christian Bale about Hostiles

Soldier on

In Hostiles, director and cowriter Scott Cooper re-teams with his Out of the Furnace star Christian Bale to tell the story of Captain Joseph J. Blocker, a man of war facing a violent transition — ...

Cinematic vocations

A smattering of career possibilities in this week’s new releases, including 12 Strong and Phantom Thread

When I was just a little boy/ I asked my mother, “What will I be?” A soldier? A sheriff? An actress? A singer? A dressmaker? Que sera, sera, kid. Que sera, sera.

That fat analog sound

My Belles A is "absolutely worth repairing”

Maybe it’s when a man starts to feel a bit broken down and disposable himself that he starts to look around for things that are worth repairing and saving. Things like this Belles A amplifier ...

Wife locks husband in chicken coop

There is a great gulf between us, millions of years wide.

I gave my wife five chickens for Christmas. A friend gave her three more, for a total of eight, which is also the number of children we’ve conceived. (Two made their exitus before being born.) ...

New movie releases for 2018

... including The Commuter and The Post

A dumb train movie. A sweet train movie. A movie about sad old people. A movie about sad young people. A movie about a strong white woman. A movie about a strong black woman. And ...

Top 18 movies of 2017

A list of favorites (as opposed to “bests”)

Looks back over the twisted landscape of 2017. Well, that was weird. Look, if lifelong cinephile Scott Marks can’t manage to put together a Top 10 List for this year, I don’t see why Matthew ...

Read it and reap

Free library boxes in front yards around Altadena/Burlingame

2302 Montclair Street Litterachur: A Supposedly Fun Thing I’ll Never Do Again, by David Foster Wallace God, etc.: The Shack, by William P. Young Crime: Smokin’ Seventeen, by Janet Evanovich. Sexytimes: none Kidz: Troubling a ...

Beat cancer, publish book. Check.

David Grant Urban uses serial murderer Cleophus Prince

David Grant Urban was a fit 50something who had just finished hiking Mount Whitney when he found a lump on his neck. “I went through cancer treatment with three other people, and they all died,” ...

The year in Reader comments

Never mind who watches the Watchmen — who critiques the critics?

Below, please find the most popular movie reviews of 2017, listed in descending order. It should go without saying that “popular” does not necessarily have any connection with “positive.” That goes double for the comments, ...

Something for everyone this Christmas weekend

All sorts of Christmas goodies in this week’s new movie releases, including Call Me By Your Name and All the Money in the World.

An ode to eros. A screed against greed. A plea for decency. A tribute to decency. A digital update of a board game. A threequel for the Bellas. Daddy issues. Chemical issues. And a trunkful ...

Call Me By Your Name, a frank depiction of desperate teenage longing

It’s not love

“What of [Alcibiades’] beard? Are you not of Homer’s opinion, who says, ‘Youth is most charming when the beard first appears’? And that is now the charm of Alcibiades.” — Socrates, the Protagoras That is ...

Machete trouble at La Jolla High

People don't get Santiago

Santiago, La Jolla’s Darger of the Hedgerows, lives most of his life in a sanctuary he carved for himself amid the dense trees and underbrush separating a kindly Frenchwoman’s home from the busy street on ...

La Jolla's version of Henry Darger

The corkscrew-childlike inner life of Santiago

A recent exhibition of works by the artist known as Santiago — aka Charlie Chimpo, aka “the Scripps Institute of Oceanography’s Retard Grandson” (a self-applied sobriquet) — during a festival at La Jolla’s Mary Star ...

Meet the new Star Wars, same as the old Star Wars...

That old familiar feeling in this week's new movie releases, including Star Wars: The Last Jedi

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 ...

Kargoyle haunts Normal Heights

Then it's off to be auctioned at Scottsdale

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. ...

On top of this little corner of the world

South Encanto has the views

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’s so funny ’bout peace, love, and understanding?

Outsiders abound in this week’s new movie releases, including The Shape of Water and The Other Side of Hope

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 ...

Pixar’s splendid Coco

“Is there sufficient reason for the tears that will inevitably run down my face by the end?”

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 ...

Mr. Halfright

The wheelchair encyclopedia of Normal Heights

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 ...

Eighteen is the new fourteen

But putting down my phone is futile

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 ...

Spoilers ahead!

A few not-so-shocking giveaways about this week’s new movie releases, including Justice League and Frank Serpico

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 ...

Barbarians at heart

The Square is lengthy, sometimes luxuriating in its long takes...to the point of discomfiture

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, ...

That ’70s feeling

This week’s new movie releases look back: Murder on the Orient Express, Last Flag Flying, Novitiate

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 ...

What’s in a restaurant name?

How Stake, West Pac Noodle Bar, Moo-Time, Leroy's, Lil Piggy's Bar-B-Q came into being

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 ...

San Diego County Gestapo drove away farmer

Mikhail Baryshnikov poster: "Don't come back"

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 ...

Starstruck

A plethora of three- and four-star movies in this week’s new releases, including Thor: Ragnarok, The Nile Hilton Incident, Jane, and Tragedy Girls

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 ...

Death, stabby and otherwise

Knives abound in this week’s new movie releases, including 78/52 and Suburbicon

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 ...

A view of Mexico from the bathtub

Mel Taylor's home on Panorama Drive lot

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 wants to be loved

“The genius behind your smartphone’s smart is a San Diego native.”

“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 ...

Kid stuff

Children abide (or don’t) in this week’s new movie releases, including The Florida Project and Goodbye Christopher Robin

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 ...

From minx to hellcat

The Florida Project: A different sort of Disney movie

“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 ...

Movie multiplicity

Lots of new movie releases, including The Foreigner and Trophy

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 ...

Consider the lowbrow Your Vice Is a Locked Room and Only I Have the Key

A brisk, brusque, bloody, bawdy Italian cheapie

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 ...

Did the Glen Street killing start at El Cajon Oktoberfest?

Death next door

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 ...

DJ Ferny prefers to go manual

Heartfelt '80s music at TJ's Privee Lounge

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 ...

The trials and triumphs of women, synthetic and otherwise

This week’s new movie releases include Blade Runner 2049, The Queen of Spain, and The Mountain Between Us

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, ...

We’ll never be royals...

...but we can watch them on screen in this week’s new releases, including The King’s Choice and Victoria and Abdul

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 ...

Liberty Station gallery shows crossover power of comics

Feeds and is fed by popular culture

“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 ...

Victoria and Abdul, out this week

A chat with Shrabani Basu, author of the book on which the film is based

“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 ...

I’d have cut off my hands

Drawing Blood — a combination of Breaking Bad, Spinal Tap, and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

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 ...

I really wanted to use a live cat

Director Charlie Bean gives background of Lego Ninjago Movie

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 ...

Sex & violence & sex & violence

Flesh and blood in this week's new movie releases, including The Villainess and The Wound

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, ...

Certified in San Diego

There was something about the freedom of Ocean Beach

“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 ...

Short-lived TV shows made here

If Netflix's Ted Sarandos reads this...

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 ...

Here It comes

Horror flick heads up this week’s new movie releases

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 ...

Take comfort, Dane DeHaan: 2017 is three-quarters over

The star has three lackluster vehicles currently in theaters, including this week’s Tulip Fever

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 ...

Local boy Dylan Moran makes good, and also makes a movie, Get Big

The kids of today

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 ...

Another good turn at La Mesa Walmart

The price of cream

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 ...

Horton Plaza has gone to seed

Even the Ben & Jerry’s is gone

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, ...

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