Most people, I think, would agree that box-office returns aren't necessarily an indicator of quality. But it was still a bit disheartening to discover that of the five movies I caught over the weekend, the two I most enjoyed were the titles most likely to leave the area when the new Ghostbusters gobbles up screens this upcoming Friday.

Ryan Gosling didn't win an Academy Award last night. But Ryan Gosling totally won the Academy Awards last night.

Almost no one, in retrospect, likes a misleading trailer, and I don't know anyone who enjoys a trailer that seems to give away a narrative's contents from points A to Z, making you feel like you've seen the movie months before you actually see it. (Ordinary Angels, anyone?) Yet I reserve a special kind of irritation for trailers that wind up almost exhaustively descriptive of the eventual experience simply through the predecessors they choose to plug.

The reasons that even Herbert virgins might want to consider showing up for Dune: Part Two lie less with the tale's specifics than the sorts of massive pleasures that only works of this magnitude provide.

Can a sweep year at the Oscars also be a spread-the-wealth year at the Oscars?

Just what is it going to take for Joel and Ethan Coen to end this silly separation of theirs and get back together? An online petition? A generous gift basket? A promise to reconsider the merits of Intolerable Cruelty?

Just how good is Kingsley Ben-Adir as the title character in Bob Marley: One Love? So good that I couldn't make out half of what he was saying.

Led by company founders T. Green and Calvin Vo, Haus of Ruckus is set to open a new comedy (with puppets) featuring the duo's stage alter egos Johnny and Fungus. If you feel like you just read that information on this site, like, days ago, you're not far off the mark: Haus of Ruckus' previous Johnny-and-Fungus adventure Punk Rock Lobster debuted on January 19 and closed on the 28th. “It's not necessarily weird that we're doing another one so soon,” says Vo. “I'd say it's less weird than … . What's the word?” “Stressful,” says Green. “Yeah. That's it.”

When director/co-writer Ben Gougeon's world premiere The Stacks: An Immersive Mystery enjoys its February 22 through March 2 run at the new Sound Conservatory – the original, longtime site of the Moline Public Library – it will mark the first theatrical presentation to be staged in the venue. It may very well be the last. But you can't blame Gougeon or his debuting show for that.

I wondered how my pals from the '80s might've collectively reacted to director Zelda Williams' and screenwriter Diablo Cody's new horror comedy had it actually been released in the year of its 1989 setting. My guess is we would've thought that it was pretty lame but had some decent laughs; that Heathers and Beetlejuice did the same sort of thing much better; and that the movie was only worth our time because we got to see it for free.

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