In the Army, I knew a guy who was an effortless runner. Sometimes on Saturday mornings, a small group of us would gather for a three-mile fun run through the town. In the dawn’s early light, we’d lope along sidewalks, down empty streets, and across small parks, enjoying the morning air. I couldn’t figure out […]

‘A Haunting in Venice’ is director/star Kenneth Branagh’s third go-around as Agatha Christie-penned detective Hercule Poirot. The other two were 2017’s “Murder on the Orient Express” and 2022’s “Death on the Nile.” “A Haunting in Venice” comes barely a year and a half after the latter film, though the turnaround is less impressive when one […]

“The Nun II” is the ninth film in the “Conjuring Universe,” a franchise tied to the adventures of paranormal investigators Ed and Lorraine Warren, but it is the third in the series chronologically. Demon-in-a-nun’s-habit Valak (Bonnie Aarons) has made appearances in installments both earlier and later in the franchise’s chronology. In other words, not only […]

When I was in the third grade, we moved from Lawton, which I could spell, to Guthrie, which I could not. My new teacher taught us interesting facts about Guthrie. She told us about the Oklahoma Land Rush of 1889. On the morning of April 22 that year, Guthrie had a resident population of zero. […]

It has been five years since we last saw Robert “The Equalizer” McCall, as played by the ever-arresting Denzel Washington. In that time, we’ve had a pandemic, three seasons of the Queen Latifah TV series (not to be confused with the Edward Woodward TV series from the 80s), and plenty of time to forget about […]

According to Jim Croce, there are four things you shouldn’t do: tug on Superman’s cape, spit into the wind, take the mask off the Lone Ranger, and mess with Big Jim Walker. The first three are used as examples of how foolish it would be to do the fourth. Jim Croce was a singer/songwriter and […]