Stories by Philip Martin

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Bullets and bad seeds In the three weeks leading up to the Columbine High School massacre in 1999, Dylan Klebold and Eric Harris made several videotapes--nearly four hours' worth of footage--in which they talk about their ... May 9, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Solitude — 'Whereabouts' departure for author I think about people who are alone a lot these days. I don't mean lonely people, because there are lonely people surrounded by family whose devices ping five times an hour with texts and direct messa... May 9, 2021

OPINION | SPIRITS: Bourbon has suddenly become a hot commodity Apparently a bourbon shortage is imminent. Maybe it's already here. My friend can't find one of his popularly priced go-tos, 10-year-old Henry McKenna, in any of the local liquor stores he frequents ... May 9, 2021

OPINION | REVIEW: 'Silo' I should probably stop trying to make "plausible horror" happen. Still, it's a reasonable movie genre, a kind of catch-all for terrifying films based on events that aren't out of the ordinary. Floria... May 7, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Two that (sort of) got away Behind the scenes here at Big Shot Movie Guy Inc., we are always scrambling. You don't care about our problems, but we have them. Mondays and Tuesdays around here are hectic times, as we try to figur... May 7, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm57 6KOeVB46rd4 [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6KOeVB46rd4] May 7, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Imperfect 'Citizen Kane' I heard last week that Rotten Tomatoes, a site that aggregates movie reviews, has added a negative review of "Citizen Kane," which drops it out of its "100 Percent Club." Movies like "Paddington 2" an... May 4, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Little Audi's night terrors There was a storm the other night, and Audi started shivering. Karen lifted her from the foot of the bed and put her down between us, and we each laid our hands over her trembling 12-pound body. Ligh... May 2, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Wright's 'Underground' gets the full treatment On April 20, a jury in Minneapolis convicted a white police officer of murdering a Black man by kneeling on his neck for more than nine minutes. For many people, this verdict was unexpected, although ... May 2, 2021

Hit or miss I'm an Anson Mount fan. I say this despite having not seen much of his work -- scrolling through his IMDb page I notice he has worked a lot in movies I've never heard of and that he figures in the 21... April 30, 2021

Oscar win deserving for 'Round' People sometimes ask me if I get to vote on the Oscars. No, I do not. I'm not a member of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences, I don't work in the film industry. I don't want to vote on t... April 30, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm430 mdScpXUMrLg [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mdScpXUMrLg] April 30, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Philip Roth's Koufax card In early 2019, I got an email from "Connecticut's Premier Estate Auction House," Litchfield County Auctions, with an invitation to peruse an online catalog of items from the estate of Philip Roth, who... April 27, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: The ballad of Johnny Rebel On Monday, while a Minneapolis jury deliberated the fate of Derek Chauvin, a retired lawyer in northeast Arkansas with whom I have no personal relationship but once was a classmate of mine formulated ... April 25, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: 'Mank' saves the Oscars From a certain perspective, the movies let us down when we needed them most. The theaters shut down, and the distribution spigot closed. Release dates for major films were pushed back. We're still wa... April 25, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: 'The Musical Human' puts music at humanity's core "You don't really care for music, do you?" — Leonard Cohen, "Hallelujah" T Bone Burnett — Bob Dylan sideman, recording artist, record producer and revivalist of American roots music &#8... April 25, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: A review of 'Mortal Kombat's' synopsis Here is the official synopsis for the movie "Mortal Kombat," opening theatrically and on the HBO Max streaming service today: "MMA fighter Cole Young, accustomed to taking a beating for money, is una... April 23, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm423 B8G8BuLfMSg [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B8G8BuLfMSg] April 23, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: About that stupid club You have no doubt heard of the 27 Club, a commonly held notion that an inordinate number of musicians die at the age of 27. It stems from the fact that over a two-year stretch beginning in 1969, Brian... April 20, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Pete Rose's hit-king hustle Pete Rose turned 80 years old last week. He played his first game 28 years after Babe Ruth played his last one. It's been 35 years since Rose retired as a player; 32 since he was banned from baseball... April 18, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Real life post covid — top 10 The other day I had my first meal in a restaurant in about 13 months. We bumped elbows in greeting, then the three of us sat around an outdoor table, unmasked, and ate and visited for a little over a... April 18, 2021

OPINION | REVIEW: 'Vanquish' George Gallo wrote "Midnight Run," one of the best road movies ever and a highlight of '80s cinema. He also wrote the original "Bad Boys" and its sequel, "Bad Boys 2." He made his directorial debut i... April 16, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Decreasing moviegoing not exactly a bad thing Two of my favorite Los Angeles movie theaters are in danger of closing. I have a hunch that someone will rescue them, that the ArcLight Hollywood (which isn't even 20 years old) and the Cinerama Dome... April 16, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/onfilm416 88_uK5ccPuw [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=88_uK5ccPuw] April 16, 2021

'All Quiet on the Western Front' (1930) It has become a cliche to say that every worthy war movie is actually an anti-war movie. Lewis Milestone's gritty and ambitious "All Quiet on the Western Front" (1930) was not the first epic war pictu... April 16, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Lincoln's last happy day "No element of Mr. Lincoln's character was so marked, obvious and ingrained as his mysterious and profound melancholy." -- Henry Whitney, Abraham Lincoln's friend On the night of April 13, 1865, W... April 13, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Me and Paul Last Monday evening I was doing a Zoom thing, a panel discussion on "Media and Polarization" hosted by a group of do-gooders called Braver Angels who have assigned themselves the task of healing the l... April 11, 2021

OPINION | REVIEW: ‘French Exit’ offers clueless characters in well-cast tale that takes its time To make a "French exit" is to do something without asking anyone's permission. These days, it's probably most commonly used as a synonym for "ghosting" -- when you leave a party early without saying ... April 9, 2021

ON FILM The video OnFilm column will return next week. April 9, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Box office returns, yet again In normal times, I don't care about box office returns. There have even been times when I've thought about lobbying against our running weekly box office reports in this section. My feeling is this i... April 9, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Missing McMurtry A couple of days before Larry McMurtry died, I got a message from a friend who also happens to be a friend of his, giving me a head's up that the sad event was imminent. The author was in hospice; his... April 6, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Symbolic gestures, opening days For the second straight Easter, there's no Gin and Ham party to go to. Lots of people have had more important things canceled because of and during this pandemic that we might finally be getting out ... April 4, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Know their names BENTONVILLE — The difference between the artist and the artisan may be something like celebrity. Before the 15th century or so, the concept of "artist" barely existed. A typical medieval Europe... April 4, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: 'First Person' — Deadpan humor, easygoing fatalism I don't read Japanese. So I don't really read Haruki Murakami, even though over the past 30 years I've read every book I could find with his name on the cover and everything I saw beneath his byline ... April 4, 2021

'Unholy': A writer's potential legacy film "The Unholy" opens today, and in the tradition of horror movies released theatrically on Good Friday (such as 2014's "Beaster Day: Here Comes Peter Cottonhell"), it wasn't screened for the critics who... April 2, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/0402onfilm 8GYwCOe-QRM [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8GYwCOe-QRM] April 2, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Road trip BENTONVILLE — Before I could drive, I found most car trips boring. We used to take them, in the ’60s, rides through America in various Chevrolets. I always wanted to stop sooner than my parents did, ... March 30, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Wreck on the highway ON THE ROAD TO BENTONVILLE -- There is a line of trucks, each separated by a couple hundred yards, strung out in the right lane over the next quarter-mile or so. They are all moving at about the same ... March 28, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Neil Young — An entrepreneur extraordinaire Most things happen with nobody sitting around taking notes. At least it seems it was that way for most people, for most lives, before digital technology made it possible to record our lives as they h... March 28, 2021

OPINION | REVIEW: 'Six Minutes to Midnight' I always thought "Downton Abbey" ended too early. The series should continue into the 1930s, when things really get interesting for the British aristocracy. If they'd carry it forward a generation, t... March 26, 2021

OPINION | NEW MOVIES: Theaters are reopening, so are our perspectives Movie theaters re-opened in New York on March 5. They re-opened in Los Angeles on March 19. And just like that, the Hollywood apparatus begins to grind. Now that movies can play in theaters in the la... March 26, 2021

OPINION | ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/326film JMPFzm0-Kf0 [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JMPFzm0-Kf0] March 26, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: To infinitive and beyond Karen's telling me this: She's riding her bike and another cyclist pulls alongside her. "Can I tell you something?" he asks politely. "I noticed you're really working hard. It would be a lot easier t... March 23, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: Ali, Frazier and Mr. Tony I was listening to Tony Kornheiser and Michael Wilbon talk about the 50th anniversary of the first fight between Muhammad Ali and Joe Frazier on Kornheiser's podcast the other day. It was one of thos... March 21, 2021

OPINION | ON BOOKS: Author in the footnotes gets his due Charles J. Finger is one of those authors whose life spans the 19th and 20th centuries and is therefore in danger of receding into the mists of irrelevance. He won the Newbery Medal for children's lit... March 21, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: 'The Last Picture Show' portrays ennui in Texas Larry McMurtry's third novel, 1966's "The Last Picture Show," is a brutal book that sizes up the North Texas plains as a killing floor for human dreams and dignity that Thomas Lask, the longtime poetr... March 21, 2021

Oscar nods not necessarily sign of quality I've never been good at remembering what films won Oscars; I thought about it for about 15 minutes before looking up the winners of last year's Academy Awards. Bong Joon-ho's "Parasite" won Best Pict... March 19, 2021

ON FILM Watch Philip Martin’s OnFilm column at: arkansasonline.com/319film/ 5DxOF_y1on4 [Video not showing up above? Click here to watch » https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5DxOF_y1on4] March 19, 2021

OPINION | PHILIP MARTIN: A journal of the plague year "I lived . . . about midway between Aldgate Church and Whitechapel Bars . . . and as the distemper had not reached to that side of the city, our neighbourhood continued very easy. But at the other end... March 16, 2021

OPINION | CRITICAL MASS: Haunting tales At first he failed to understand his predicament. To become a ghost upon dying was one thing, but to become a ghost centuries before you were born was something else entirely: a fate for which his im... March 14, 2021