by Mike Parnell | Oct 19, 2012 | Opinion
An old Hollywood cliché has it that actors really want to direct. Ben Affleck is an actor who now directs. “Argo” is his third directorial effort, and I feel it is his best. The story is about how six employees from the U.S. embassy in Tehran escaped while...
by Mike Parnell | Oct 5, 2012 | Opinion
Movies have played with the idea of time travel in many ways. Most famous is probably the trio of “Back to the Future” movies. In them, we see how changes in the past, wrought by one from the future, can create huge ripples in time. In...
by Mike Parnell | Sep 28, 2012 | Opinion
Director Paul Thomas Anderson does more than just put pictures up on a screen. He is an artist that creates a canvas, lush and beautiful. Then he coaxes performances from actors that are some of the best in current cinema. His latest movie, “The Master,”...
by Mike Parnell | Aug 24, 2012 | Opinion
From the folks that gave us “Coraline” comes a new stop-motion animated movie, “ParaNorman.” Norman Babcock (Kodi Smit-McPhee) is a kid that loves old zombie movies. But that’s not the most interesting thing about him: Norman has the...
by Mike Parnell | Aug 10, 2012 | Opinion
At the end of John Ford’s “The Grapes of Wrath,” Ma Joad sums up the life of the poor and downtrodden. “Rich fellas come up an’ they die, an’ their kids ain’t no good an’ they die out,” she says. “But we keep...
