Before I get to the review proper, a quick explanation of why, after my recent dreadful trip to the Republic of Chibastan, I watched yet another Sonny Chiba movie…
I have a handful of weird compulsions …

Despite a whiffy premise that put me in mind of Christine, and not in a good way, I wanted to like The Entity more than I did. It just isn’t scary enough.
The entity in question …

The Plot: A teacher with financial problems gets beaten up, and because notorious loan shark Tony Delaplant’s son Hoagy (…seriously) attends the school, it’s assumed that one of them is involved. Hanson is sent in …

I’d gotten used to thinking of Sonny Chiba movies as ponderous, shadowy wastes of time, but it occurred to me recently that maybe I remembered them unfairly. It’s Chiba, for God’s sake; it’s not all …

Don’t make that face, Raja. We got this.
Join me and special guest Couch Baron for some live-chat realness — a RuPaul’s Drag Race live watch-along, Monday night at 10 EDT (DirecTV subscribers get the show …

It’s a little disappointing that what looks at first glance like an ascot is actually just Thompson’s shirt collar sticking up from whatever waxed-canvas work-shirt frambus he’s wearing, but the carefully casual Dick Van Patten-model …

Adrian Nicole LeBlanc’s amazing longitudinal history of a sprawling New York family, Random Family: Love, Drugs, Trouble, and Coming of Age in the Bronx, is hard to read, but even harder to put down. The …

It’s a pop-culture behind-the-scenes extravaganza in the TNRA poll this time around. Joining Brinda and Grann from last time: JWOWW, Angela Chase, Scott Weiland’s wife, Graydon Carter, and oh yeah the Philadelphia Mob. Klassy!
Can’t wait …

The Plot: Hanson and Penhall go undercover in one of their habitual guises, the McQuaid brothers, for one of Jump Street’s habitual drills: buy drugs in increasing quantities from a couple of middlemen in an …

I had never seen The Crying Game, despite knowing the twist most of my adult life — which is why I had never bothered seeing it. The spoiler aspect didn’t bother me, but everything except …