A.I., Boomer: "Here," reviewed."

Robin Wright and Tom Hanks get decades shaved off by an A.I. tool called Metaphysic Live in Here. (Sony)

On Here, the reunion of Forrest Gump principals, for the Paper of Record.

Lots here about Bob Zemeckis’s obsession with still-janky digital de-aging tech. Spike Lee’s 2020 war-vet drama Da Five Bloods achieved more stirring results by making no attempt to hide its 60-something-year-old cast members’ ages in the flashback scenes set during their combat tours in Vietnam half a century prior.

I’m rooting for Zemeckis. Flight is great. I liked Allied, his 2016 WWII espionage thriller that no one saw, too.

R & J, IRL: Folger's "Romeo and Juliet," reviewed.

Cole Taylor and Caro Reyes Rivera as those star-cross’d young lovers. (Erika Nizborski)

You know that game where you try to think of old movies or plays where the introduction of cell phones would spoil the plot? Romeo and Juliet has always seemed like an obvious one, but Raymond O. Caldwell, director of the Folger’s season-opening update of the tragedy, begs to differ. My Washington Post review is here.

The Centrists Cannot Hold: "Mister Lincoln" and "Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground," reviewed.

Tony Award winner John Rubinstein in Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground. (Maria Baranova)

My joint review of Ford’s Scott Bakula-starring production of Mister Lincoln, and of Olney’s show about the president elected four score and seven years after his assassination, Eisenhower: This Piece of Ground, is up at the Paper of Record.

Just Say Nay: "Cracking Zeus," reviewed

Nicole Ruthmarie and Charles Franklin IV in Spooky Action’s Cracking Zeus. (DJ Corey Photography)

Greek myth and anti-drug messaging collide in Cracking Zeus, a new(ish) play by Christopher T. Hampton that has some intriguing ideas but doesn’t fully cohere in Spooky Action’s production despite several strong perfomrances. My Washington Post review is here.

The Lions in Winter: "Wolfs," reviewed.

Brad Pitt and George Clooney play a pair of lone Wolfs (sic). (Apple TV+)

Eighteen years after my debut as a Washington Post contributor, my debut was a WaPo film critic comes with a fun piece on Wolfs, the pluralization-punking reunion of lions-in-winter George and Brad.

"Alien" Nation: Hollywood's Ickiest Franchise has Always Been an Incubator for Filmmaking Talent

In space, no can hear your scream at your A.D.

No film franchise has had a more accomplished class of filmmakers explode from its womb than the ALIEN-iad. Extraterrestrial, extraterrestrial, read all about it in the Paper of Record.

Summer of '82: "The Future Was Now," reviewed.

Walter Koenig and Paul Winfield on the set of Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan, part of the genre Class of ‘82.

If you’re a certain kind of cinephile, you probably know a few things with the rote force of scripture: That Conan — the barbarian, not the talk show host — philosophized about what is best in life. That E.T. phoned home. That Spock sacrificed himself to save the crew of the starship Enterprise. That patricidal “replicant” Roy Batty, in the final moments of his own brief life, eulogized his vanishing memories as “tears in rain.”

My Washington Post review of Chris Nashawaty’s The Future Was Now: Madmen, Mavericks, and the Epic Sci-Fi Summer of 1982 is here.

Not a Chuckle Less: "HA HA HA HA HA HA HA," reviewed.

Clown-as-life-coach Julia Masli. (Cameron Whitman))

On HA HA HA HA HA HA HA, a clown show that was one of the most popular attractions at last year’s Edinburgh Festival Fringe, now at Woolly Mammoth for a short run.