The Wright Stuff: "The Running Man," reviewed.

In his 2015 book Silver Screen Fiend, comedian and Broad Run High School Class of 1987 graduate Patton Oswalt recalls that he worked at a three-screen cinema at the intersection of Dranesville Road and Route 7 in Sterling, Virginia. That happens to be the theater where my dad took me to see The Running Man, the Arnold Schwarzenegger-headlined adaptation of a 1982 Stephen King novella set in the year 2025, three or four months after Oswalt’s graduation. When I read Oswalt’s book, it occurred to me that Oswalt might’ve been the guy who sold my dad one adult and one kid ticket to The Running Man on a Saturday or Sunday afternoon 38 years ago.

I see now that Oswalt graduated from the College of William & Mary in 1991, so when The Running Man opened in November 1987, he would’ve been down in Williamsburg, most of the way through the first semester of his freshman year. Unless he was coming home to work at the theater on weekends! I don’t recall him saying anything about that in his book.

The subject of Silver Screen Fiend is the way Oswalt’s exploding cinephilia as a Los Angeles resident in his late twenties, aided and abetted by the brilliant every-night-a-double-feature programming of the New Beverly Theater, curdled into something very like addiction. As a guy who used to drive down to the New Beverly a lot during my own late twenties in Southern California, and who is now frequently at one of two Alamo Drafthouse locations within bicycling range of my apartment on the evenings when I’m not attending a critics’ screening of a new release, I think about that a lot.

Anyway, my Washington Post review of director Edgar Wright’s new, more faithful adaptation of King’s novella is here.

Some Country For No Men: "Predator: Badlands," reviewed.

Love the One You’re With: Elle Fanning and Dimitrius Schuster-Koloamatangi. (20th Century Studios)

I fear I’ve let you all down by not publishing a thinkpiece exploring What It All Means that both of the Arnold Schwarzenegger / Jesse Ventura movies from 1987, Predator and The Running Man, have a sequel and a remake (respectively) hitting cinemas a week apart from one another, 38 years later.

Anyway, my Washington City Paper review of the new Predator: Badlands is here.

You can also listen to the Pop Culture Happy Hour episode where I discussed the film with pals Glen Weldon and Ronald Young, Jr. below.

Pop Culture Happy Hour: "Deliver Me From Nowhere"

Stations of the Boss: Jeremy Allen White as Bruce Joseph Douglas Springsteen.

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Springsteen: Deliver Me From Nowhere, filmmaker Scott Cooper’s adaptation of Warren Zanes’ eponymous nonfiction book about the making of Bruce Springsteen’s album Nebraska, is pretty conventional. But there’s an odd moment near the end that Linda Holmes, Stephen Thompson and I did not discuss on our Pop Culture Happy Hour episode about the movie. While nothing in this barely-fictionalized account of a well-documented chapter in the life of one of the famous musicians in history could be called a spoiler, this is one of the few interpretive choices Cooper makes that’s all surprising or intriguing, so reader beware.

The scene is a coda to the film, following a title card that reads “Ten Months Later,” which I inferred meant that this post-concert scene was set on the opening night of the Born in the U.S.A. tour in June 1984. Springsteen’s father Doug (an underused Stephen Graham) is waiting in The Boss’s dressing room, and he invites his son to sit on his knee. Among his other gentle protests, Jeremy Allen White’s Springsteen says, I’m 32 years old, Pop. But Bruce Joseph Douglas Springsteen (b. Sept. 23, 1949) was 34 when that tour began. I’ve probably misstated my age at some point in my life, but I can’t imagine that film as rigidly researched as this one, derived from an excellent nonfiction book and with its subject a frequent presence on the set, could miss a detail like that. I don’t think it’s an error. As I was watching the movie I thought it might be a clue that this a dream sequence. I went back and checked Springsteen’s memoir Born to Run to see if he made any mention of an odd occurrence like this happening on the beginning of the biggest tour of his career. He did not.

If my voice sounds a little odd on the episode, that’d be because I accidentally recorded myself via my crappy computer microphone instead of my Shure SM7B, a professional mic used by, among others, Marc Maron, who has a small role in the film as studio engineer Chuck Plotkin, whose name will be familiar to you if you’ve pored over 30-plus years of Springsteen liner notes as obsessively as I have. It’s only fitting that I encountered a rare recording-quality problem on the episode where we discuss the making of Bruce’s perfectly imperfect 1982 outlier LP Nebraska.

Meanwhile, my City Paper review of the film — where I go on a bit without getting into the weeds about exactly how old the now-76-year-old Springsteen was when — is here.

House of Cards: Arena's "Freemont Ave," reviewed.

Bradley Gibson plays three generations of men in the Family Plique in Freemont Ave. (Marc J. Franklin)

My Washington City Paper review of Freemont Ave., a multi-generational world premiere from playwright Reggie D. White at Arena Stage, is here.

Warily We Roll Along: "Strategic Love Play," reviewed.

Danny Gavigan and Bligh Voth. (Christopher Mueller)

Strategic Love Play, an enigmatic one-act two-hander from Mancunian playwright Mriam Battye, has had a few of the Britishisms combed out of its since its debut in 2023 but is otherwise intact. My Washington Post review of Signature Theatre’s regional premiere is here.

Not Bad for a Human: The Androids of "Alien," Picked Over for Vulture

Lance Henriksen’s gentle, loyal “artificial person” Bishop in Aliens. (Fox)

With the first season of Noah Hawley’s franchise-extending Alien: Earth wrapping up, I ranked the many “artificial persons” of the Alien-iad according to how persuasively human they are. For Vulture.

Hit the road, Jack Falstaff: "Merry Wives," reviewed.

Jacob Ming-Trent and the cast of Merry Wives at Shakespeare Theatre Company. (Teresa Castracane)

My Washington City Paper review of the STC revival of Jocelyn Bioh’s 2021 Merry Wives of Windsor update Merry Wives is here.

The Splits: "Splitsville," reviewed.

My Washington Post review is the new polygamy comedy from Michael Angelo Covino and Kyle Martin, the cowriters/costars behind The Climb, is here.