The Peanuts gang happily circles around Charlie Brown

The kids, a whole bunch of them piled into a Saturday afternoon matinée in the biggest and plushest of Regal Cinemas’ Syracuse theaters in Syracuse mall Shoppingtown, admired The Peanuts Movie enough to sit still and at attention through 119 minutes. The adults, parents and grandparents and others who’ve grown up with the screen and…

Sandra Bullock doesn’t give a damn until she creates a Crisis

When Jane Bodine answers the door to the political operatives who want to win her sly services at the start of Our Brand Is Crisis, the campaign specialist is checked out, home alone “between two mountains” as she carefully explains to them. And even though she agrees to join the crew back in Bolivia, the…

You can’t help but get pumped when he’s up on the wire for The Walk

When Philippe Petit is up there on his wire, I couldn’t help but love The Walk cowriter and director Robert Zemeckis made sure of that. The master of cool special effects made the most of the true tale of the French tightrope-walker, who had the audacity and nerve to pull what he calls The Coup.…

American Ultra finally allows the haze to clear

At the start of American Ultra, a beat-up and bloody dude by the name of Mike is asked how he got to such a state by an authoritative figure. Wanting to be supportive, he starts to answer. Instead we get quick panels of flashbacks. Sitting in a late Friday afternoon showing in the Regal Cinemas…

If you need to see the street side, Straight Outta Compton hits hard

Back in the ’80s, when their rhymes and beats of great passion started rolling in from the west coast, I must admit the true grit of rap from N.W.A. greatly went in my ears more like a news story than a foundation change of my soul. I was a Bruce Springsteen guy loving rock covering…

One and done for my Christmas shopping

Two big boxes, one strip center, one old-school mall and a mega entertainment, dining and shopping cooooomplex! I started and finished my Christmas shopping yesterday. When I got home, I quickly addressed the cards to my significants ahoy, stuffed them with the gift cards, affixed stamps and walked in the rain with Ellie B aka…

Everybody line up. Squirrels to the right, elephants to the left

This sign caught my eye while walking around (and around) Shoppingtown in DeWitt. Usually this corner of the mall delivers the sweet scent of chocolate. On this day, it was cashews, almonds and pecans. I passed but my imagination went wild, as my headline demonstrates.