Howie Balaban: Couch Critic: ET: The Extraterrestrial

This past weekend I had the chance to go see E.T. and Back to the Future at the Sunset Drive-In in Middleport. Alas, due to a variety of reasons, that didn’t happen on either Friday or Saturday, and on Sunday my wife and I determined that it wouldn’t be a good idea to keep our youngest out that late heading into a new week. Plus, with everyone needing to get up at a reasonable hour on Monday, it just made sense to stay home.

Howie Balaban: The Couch Critic: Citizen Kane

There are some names in American history that many of us probably don’t even realize we’ve heard by the time we reach our teen years. In some cases, we may even “think” we know who a person is or what a person stands for just because one or two things that person did have become such grand moments in our country’s story that we may come to believe that what we “think” we know is all we “need” to know.

Take, for example, Orson Welles.

Howie Balaban Couch Critic: Blade Runner

Let’s get one very important thing out of the way first: Given the amount of praise heaped in this movie’s direction before I finally took the time to watch it a couple years ago, there was no way it could live up to such billing. Right? A movie that becomes a masterpiece for one reason or another sometimes becomes a victim of its own success in that it must continue to live up to those expectations for generations of viewers who may not be able to understand how and why the movie earned such acclaim.

Howie Balaban: The Couch Critic: What are Christmas Movies?

Regular readers on this site know by now that I’m a fan of movies. I can talk about them with anyone, and I’ll recommend favorites of several genres. Sure, there are a few that I should have seen by now, and there are some I just don’t get or appreciate as much as the majority of people do, but I still love movies.